Starfall, Moonset
by IrishLeFay
Summary: Sirius goes to Remus's after excaping Azkaban and the dementors, but will things ever be the same between them. Post third book, assumes a RS relationship preVoldemort Warning: noncon in chapter two and mentioned in chapter 7 Updated 10505 sorry for the l
1. Bridges Burned

Disclaimer: Don't own them, if I did I wouldn't be a poor college student.

Starfall, Moonset

By: Irish

Chapter One: Bridges Burned.

Padfoot stopped out side the tiny cabin... really more of a shack, looking over his shoulder at Buckbeak, whose halter lead he held in his canine maw. Remus was going to be pissed. For one, where the hell was he going to put a hippogriff, for two.... he was late. Though the ex professor was a fairly gentle and mild mannered man, nothing bothered him more then tardiness. Not in little things, but if he asked you to be there for something, you were there on time. Remus had asked him to be here for the full moon. That was yesterday. Talk about being a day late and a dollar short, Padfoot was most certainly both at the   
moment, and Moony was going to kill him. With a heavy doggy sigh Sirius Black padded up the stairs to the cabin in dog form, hopping up on his hind legs to scratch at the door whining. 

'_Come on Remus answer the damn door_' he thought to himself. It took a few moments for his sharp ears to hear the shuffle of bare feet over hardwood. Finally, the door creaked open, reveling a very exhausted Remus Lupin. He must have known who was at the door because he hadn't even bothered to dress and wore only a pair of pajama bottoms that were about two inches too short, and very well worn around the seams.  


The tawny haired man pinned his canine friend with a look before just stepping back and letting the odd duo enter. Once the door was closed behind him, Sirius released Buckbeak's lead and shifted up into human form. It had been a month since Remus had seen his friend last, in the forbidden forest, as he had been corralled away from the children, and truthfully, Sirius hadn't improved much. His clothes were worse then before, the gray prison robes of Azkaban were worn down to the point of being practically see through. His black hair, which he had always worn long, fell in a tangled mess past his shoulders, and   
Remus could swear he saw fleas, or lice, or both, hopping around on him. Most notably though, the man was totally emaciated. Even though Lupin had felt a sharp stab of anger seeing his friend on the doorstep a day late, it melted away seeing his condition.   


Sirius knew he was off the hook. He saw those expressive eyes go from hard as amber, melting into toffee. Oh how he knew that look, and oh how he had missed it. He almost fell into Remus's arms, almost dropped to his knees and begged forgiveness and comfort. But he steeled himself. No, no he knew the pain of needing someone. He knew what it felt like, to lay weeping for your lover, to pray to all manner of higher being for just a few moments of comfort. Sirius knew what it was to ache, physically ache, for that familiar warmth in your arms, and he swore, swore on all things sacred he would never let anything make him feel like that again. Going back to Azkaban was a looming reality, and the only way he knew to stop that endless ache, was to not love. To let that part that had been so thoroughly sucked from his soul, to remain gone. To not repair those bridges, no matter how much present comfort they would offer, because in the end... in the end there was only frozen tears.  


"I've got to admit my friend... you look a little worse for wear." Remus smiled gently, taking any edge off that might have been in those words.  


"Yeah well you know.... the starving fugitive look is in these days.... Listen, I think I've got fleas.... or lice.... or some other unpleasant biting bug... you might not want to get to close." Sirius's voice was a harsh rasp, like a heavy smoker who had been strangled and had a head cold.  


"I see that.... if I thought you actually wanted to be touched I wouldn't let that stop me." There was hurt in his ex lover's voice and it made Sirius blanche. They had had something once but, Azkaban had sucked all the joy and love of that from Sirius.... and left him only with that endless aching need. He was numb no w and he wanted it to stay like that.  


"Don't be like that right now Remus...."  


"Be like what?" The ex professor side, running a hand through his hair. "Which do you want first, food or shower?"  


"You got someplace I can put Buckbeak here? He's pretty tired too." Sirius patted the hippogriff on the neck fondly as he looked around trying to discern where Remmy kept the rest of his living quarters. Though cheerful, if not shabby, the shack currently held only one room that was separated by rugs and furniture into a kitchen and a living room. The only other thing in the room was a back door. And as far as Sirius had seen from the outside, there was nothing more to the dimensions of this humble abode then this room.  


"Yeah, I have a spare room, of sorts..." Remus moved over to the back door and tapped the knob with his wand and said. "stable." Opening the door he reveled a very comfortable looking paddock complete with oats, straw to rest on and a nice big trough to clean up in, as well as a bucket of water to drink from. Buckbeak nudged his handler, then pranced impatiently as he waited for the bridle to be removed. Finally freed from his tack the hippogriff trotted happily into his new home. Remus shut the door behind him. "Now, I would suggest a shower, I can get some food ready for you while you clean up.... and call me when you're almost done so I can do a delousing spell."  


"I don't suppose you have a tub." Sirius had shuddered visibly at the word shower, and Remus made a few guesses as to why.   
"Yes I do, a very warm and comfortable one, if not terribly big.... here... come on." Remus gingerly grasped the cuff of his friends robe and pulled him over to the door which he opened again, this time onto a small, but tidy and functional bathroom, with a shower stall, a claw foot tub, a loo and a basin to wash in. Remus led Sirius all the way into the bathroom, nudging him to sit on the counter that held the basin before kneeling at his feet, unlacing his boots with concentration and tenderness.  


"Remmy... don't...." Sirius tried to pull his foot away.  


"Shut up Padfoot."  


Padfoot shut up, feeling his sallow skin heat with embarrassment. Leave it to Remmy to take such good care of him. Once the boots were pried from his feet Remus stood and turned on he water to the tub letting it fill with bubbles as he touched his want to the waters surface muttering a delousing incantation. That done he turned to Sirius once more, and opened his mouth to say something, then just shook his head, sliding from the room. Just before he closed the door he called over his shoulder.  


"Soak as long as you like. I will bring the food in." And not giving his friend time to argue, Remus shut the door behind him.  


  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

  
When Remus returned to the bathroom, Sirius had sunken down in the water so the only parts of him exposed were his nose, eyes and the top of his head. His black hair floated like tangled seaweed around his shoulders.   


"Feel good?" Remus asked softly, kneeling down beside the tub on folded towel. Sirius sat up a little straighter, so his mouth was above water to answer.  


"I think it's the first time I've been warm in twelve years."  
Remus smiled slightly, setting the tray over the tub, the handles balanced on the lip of the tub. 

"Here, I didn't want to give you anything that would be too hard to digest, I made porridge. I mixed it with juice, instead of water, it will taste better, and I thought the dairy would be too hard on your stomach, there is some cinnamon and sugar mixed in, so it should taste all right. There is some green tea with honey to help your throat, and a few bites of chicken. I know porridge and chicken don't go so well but... you need some protein... there is also chocolate there. I don't know if it will help but.... it is the best cure for dementors." Remus knew he was rambling but, his heart ached, ached for his friends condition, for the love that seemed to have slipped through the cracks of their lives....well rather through the great gapping hole of Sirius's. Remus loved him as much as ever, and always would.   


"Thanks." The word of gratitude was mumbled out through a mouth full of porridge which Sirius was shoveling into his mouth faster then he could swallow.   


"Careful, you'll choke." Remus admonished, settling in next to the tub. Not a word was said again until Sirius has cleaned every morsel of food from the tray but the chocolate, which sat untouched.  


"Merlin.... I'm still starving... but I feel like I'm going to spew." Sirius groaned in true misery, leaning back against the tub wall again.   


"You ate too fast."  


"I couldn't help it."  


"Shhh." Remus reached up and gently touched Sirius's wet hair. "Just relax, it will pass."  


"Don't do that Remmy."  


"Do what?"  


"Treat me like a lover."  


"What do you want me to treat you like. We're lovers." Remus frowned, finger tips grazing over Sirius's inky hair.  


"No. We haven't been lovers in twelve years. There as been no verb about our love in twelve years. And even if you were being loose with the term, I don't love you any more Moony. I cant." Sirius didn't let any emotion show in his voice, trying to sound nonchalant.  


"Don't lie to me Sirius, you are terrible at it. I know that you feel.... empty... right now. But I have enough love for both of us... until you find yourself again." The werewolf's voice was gentle as he carded his fingers through dark tresses, coaxing the worst of the tangles to the bottom.   


"I'm not lying Moony. And what if I don't want to find that part of me again."  


"Why? Because you don't think you deserve it any longer? Because you're afraid of feeling again, feeling good again, because it can be taken from you, and made ten times worse? Because you wont feel lonely if you are always alone?" As usual the man had a disturbingly accurate insight to the animangus.   


"Shut up Remmy."  


"What if I don't." It was a gentle challenge. The kind that told Sirius that Remus was as stubborn as always and that he wouldn't let Sirius sink into the unfeeling oblivion he wanted so badly, and Sirius hated him for it.  


"Because if you don't I will clock you one. Stop mussing with my hair."  


"No you wont. And if you don't let me try to untangle it we will have to cut it off." Irritatingly calm and collected, as always. Remmy conjured a comb out of thin air and started to work on Sirius's hair, letting the man brood. He was forced to conjure a scissors a half hour later when he saw that some of the mats were beyond untangling, but he had managed to comb the worst of them to the ends of Sirius's hair so he was only cutting of a couple inches. 

Under Remus's tender ministrations, Sirius had actually fallen asleep, his body lax in the water, snoring softly. When his hair was sorted out, Remus looked him over before grabbing a towel, draping it over his shoulder he carefully lifted Sirius out of the water, his emaciated frame like lifting air. Moony gently wrapped the towel around his friend, walking out into the main room as Sirius slept on, then turned around closing the bathroom door, then opening it again, to reveal his bedroom. Only a handful of candles lit the comfortable room and Remus was careful not to bump and of the fugitives dangling appendages on the furniture as he made his way to the high four poster bed, laying Sirius in its soft depths. Sirius moaned, brow creasing with pain. 

Frowning, Remus watched him trying to see what hurt. The starved frame of his friend lay rigidly, his back practically arched, the exhausted muscles unable to really relax. Gently, Remus turned him on his stomach, pulling the warm covers up to his waist before placing a heating enchantment on his hands and laying them over Sirius's back, massaging until he felt the muscles relax and stop spasming, and Sirius lay limp on the soft flannel covers. Smiling Remus sat back, pulling the blankets up to his friends chin, bending to kiss his forehead softly before standing and slipping from the room


	2. Fire and Ice

Disclaimer: Don't own them, if I did I wouldn't be a poor college student.  
  
Starfall, Moonset  
By: Irish  
Chapter Two: Fire and Ice  
  
Remus settled in on the couch, tugging off his battered muggle sweatshirt as he did. He stared, eyes unseeing, into the fire.  
  
"Sirius, Sirius, Sirius." Remus moaned, covering his face with his hands. Why couldn't they catch a break. It had been twelve years.. Twelve, long ungodly years, but they were as distant as ever. Remus could understand, with the logical part of his mind why this was so. He could tell, just by looking at him, that unspeakable things had been done to his beloved, and that kind of pain wasn't fixed with a hug, a kiss, and a shag. He however, had held out hope that when Sirius finally came to him. he would want comfort, as lovers, would want to be held and soothed. The reality was that he could barely stand to be touched and Remus was going to be sleeping on the bloody couch. But Merlin did he ache all over. It felt like every centimeter of his skin was bruised, broken or abraded.  
  
"Bloody fucking couch. should have gotten a fold out.." He muttered as he took out his wand. Giving the couch a good whack with his wand and muttering an expanding charm he at least made it big enough so he could fully stretch out on it. It was still hard and lumpy, but at least it wasn't the floor. Remus lightly ran a hand over the tawny hair scattered very lightly on his chest before folding his hands under his head and staring up at the ceiling. Forcing himself to be optimistic Remus reminded himself that Sirius was both alive, and free..well out of Azkaban least wise, and everything beyond that could be worked on.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
All pervasive consuming cold, the kind of cold that sunk its fingers so deep in your soul you froze from the inside out , and it hurt, like liquid nitrogen. It burned, burned like dry ice against your skin. The blackness behind those gray hoods was frigid space with ice chip stars for eyes. Whoever thought the night sky was soft and warm like jewels on velvet had obviously never been to Azkaban.  
  
Water dripped an under lying rhythm to the music of this third hell, the punctuations of screams like electric guitar solos and mad laughter rolling drums. Oh yeah, life was a song alright. His cell stank of urine and mildew and fear. The smell of sex had finally faded, it was that smell that disgusted him the most. The smell of the half rancid semen drying on the stone floor, or on his body or robes. It wasn't so bad when one of the Death Eaters was rewarded with Sirius's body.. But sometimes the dementors took a turn.  
  
The sound of metal against stone filled the inky room, and Sirius felt as if all of space had just filled his cell. He almost vomited, would have if there had been anything in him to empty. There was only one reason they ever entered his cell. He didn't turn to them, couldn't.  
  
"Hey there Siri. I tattled on some o' me block mates. Got me a right purddy reward." Sirius could hear the leer in the mans voice. Already his anal muscles tensed in protest, still sore and torn from the last 'reward'. Still he did not turn, seeing would only make it worse. In the space of a breath his robes had been jerked up over his head, tangling around his arms pinning them above his head. Sirius grunted trying to draw breath as he was crushed against the wall, hips gripped in two meaty hands, he could already feel the bruises forming. His hips were jerked back, exposing him. He could hear himself whimpering and keening in fear as he struggled to escape those two hands but he was too tired, too hungry, too lost.  
  
He felt like he had been impaled with a frozen pipe as big around as his fist. He tried to scream but an arm came around his throat choking him, forcing his back to bow. 'No, no, god no.' his mind chanted in constant mantra as the flesh covered lead pipe pistoned in and out of him, his equilibrium wavering as his brain started to loose oxygen. The arm crooked over his throat was cutting off most of his air, the tangled robes, stiff with grime, holding in what carbon dioxide he expelled.  
  
'Autoerotic asphyxiation' Sirius thought to himself fuzzily. A burning stream of liquid fire shot through him and the man cold-fucking him grunted and snorted in pleasure. Three drips later the man pulled from Sirius roughly, with a wet squelching noise. The arm around his throat released and Sirius gasped and choked for air, wrestling with the robes around his head as he collapsed to the floor, sobbing. Finally he wrenched them from his face panting, even the sickly dungeon air was the sweetest he had tasted in that moment.  
  
When the world stopped spinning and Sirius lay naked on his heaped robes, he finally had the strength to feel delicately between his legs, assessing the damage. Slowly he brought his hand back to his face, feeling it coated in something. His palm cradled great clots of blood and rotting flesh black beetles crawling through it, and then he felt them, thousands more of them crawling inside of him, in his body, and over the backs of his legs, and he screamed-  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Remus almost fell off the couch he sat up so fast, blood pounding his ears. For a moment he was unsure what had awoken him, and he looked around frantically, wolf sense cued. When Sirius screamed again Remus though for sure his ear drops were blown in to oblivion. Leaping to his feet he yanked his wand from the pocket of his muggle jeans that he had fallen asleep in, and sprinted headlong into his bedroom, expecting Sirius to be under attack.  
  
The room was still but for Sirius who lay thrashing on the bed. The light from the candles placed about was dim, but by far enough for the ex professor to see that is was entirely devoid of any harm or threat. With a relieved sigh, Remus shoved his wand back into his pocket moving over to the bed and laying a hand on his friends shoulder. Sirius sat up like the arm of a catapult, sitting straight and rigid, his breath ragged as sweat poured from him.  
  
"No! Please! Don't!"  
  
"Siri, Siri, its okay, its just a dream." Remus soothed, touching his cheek. "You're safe, no one knows you are here."  
  
"Remmy?" Sirius turned to face him slowly. "Oh god, Remmy, is it truly you? This isn't a dream?"  
  
Remus's tense expression melted with the lost need in his once lover's voice, and he took his gaunt face between his long fingered hands. "Yes baby, its me, you're at my place, remember? You fell asleep In the tub and I brought you to bed. You're safe."  
  
The gentle timbre of Moony's voice soothed Sirius further and he slumped against the warm strong body beside him, resting his head on Remus's shoulder, trying to catch his breath. "I was having a flash back. or a dream. or something.. There was this guy. who had a thing for autoerotic asphyxiation. and he was choking me.."  
  
"Autoerotic? No baby, if he was choking you that's Sadistic, if he was doing it to himself it would be autoerotic." Remmy corrected with out thinking.  
  
Sirius paused, thinking about that a moment. Sadistic Asphyxiation. not autoerotic.. The fear drained from him suddenly, as if by knowing its proper name laid it to rest. Sirius wished it was that easy. More then likely it was just Remus's presents, what he had craved so long, finally given to him. He had always felt safe with Remus. But Sirius no longer had the luxury of safety or love. Those things were no longer his to posses, and he pulled out of Moony's loose embrace, flopping back on the pillows.  
  
"Thanks Remus. Its all under control now, just a bad dream."  
  
"You're welcome Siri, do you want me to stay with you." The werewolf tried not to sound hopeful, but Merlin how he craved the warm body of his lover next to him.  
  
"No, and don't call me Siri." Sirius snipped back, pulling the blankets up over his nude self. "I've been on my own twelve years now. I don't need a nanny now, just because it works out for you."  
  
"What? Was I supposed to break into Azkaban? Rot in a cell with the man I though had betray us. me . in the worst way possible?"  
  
"No, believing me innocent and visiting now and again would have been okay." Sirius turned his back to his friend, curling on his side.  
  
"You didn't do me the courtesy of benefit of the doubt, and I was accused of no crime save in your mind." Remus stood abruptly, glaring hard at the narrow back that barely was a wrinkle in the quilt.  
  
"Spare me, you didn't loose twelve years of your life."  
  
"No. I didn't, you are right. My apologizes. You're still serving that sentence Siri, they still hold you prisoner. even if you are physically free. Don't kid yourself about that." Remus put one knee on the bed, leaning down and kissing Sirius's forehead.  
  
"Damnit Remmy, stop acting like if you just do the right things or say the right lines suddenly I will remember how madly in love with you I was and fall into your arms. I do remember, but that was then, things have changed and I don't love you any more."  
  
"Fine with me. Problem with that is, wolves mate for life. I will love you from now until the day I die. I can't move on, or forget or pretend I don't feel like this because I do. I'm sorry that that makes life a little more difficult for you, but its one of those lycanthropic side effects. Sleep tight Siri." Remus forced a nonchalance he didn't feel, his heart was in his throat, and he felt like weeping over the entire situation, but reverse psychology had always worked like.. Well, like a charm on Sirius, who hated to be told what to do. Making sure the animangis was well tucked in Remus padded from the room shutting the door all but a crack.  
  
The fire in the hearth was but embers casting an eerie glow about the small cottage as Remus stood, one hand tangled in his hair, the other resting on his hip. He almost wished Sirius had stayed away, it would hurt less. But he was here, and he would continue to be here until he had gained enough weight to look human again, and if Remus had any say in it, until his mind was held together by more then just sheer will power. That said, he would be here months. Months of gut wrenching heart ache.. Oh yes this would be pleasant. Remus barked out a peel of bitter laughter, before padding barefoot back over to his enlarge couch and lowering himself to it carefully, adding one more stone to the wall around his heart. 


	3. Screaming Infidelities

           Disclaimer: Don't own them, if I did I wouldn't be a poor college student.

Starfall, Moonset

By: Irish

Chapter Three: Screaming Infidelities

When Sirius awoke the next morning, he found himself oblivious of the time. It was not an all-together unfamiliar sensation, as his years in Azkaban, as well as his time on the run, had been out side of time. He was, on the other hand, acutely aware of the gentle caress of soft cotton sheets over his naked skin, the sensation was second, only to the hot bath he had soaked in last night, in luxury. He stretched slowly, his bones creaking in protest. Oh yes he could lie here all day, it was so wonderful. 

He turned over on his side, finally opening his eyes to have a look around. The bed itself was fairly high; it seemed an heirloom or antique. The headboard was intricately etched and each of the four posts was perfectly carved. The walls were painted a soothing blue-grey, but what drew Sirius's attention the most were the pictures. They were all in black metal frames that kept the walls from looking cluttered, with their crisp lines.  The pictures were in both blank and white and colour, muggle and wizard, there were even some hand drawn pictures. 

Sirius crossed his arms under his head, watching the various photos. He saw ones of Remus and himself before James and Lillie had been killed, a happy couple, so in love. Pictures of all the marauders, spanning all of their seven years at Hogwarts. Pictures from Lilly and James's wedding, Harry's christening, Remus's siblings and extended family, nieces, nephew cousins, old family pets. It seemed as though almost every person who had ever passed through Remus's life was represented on these walls. Dozens of the Marauders, dozens of Lilly and James, Of Remus and himself, just as many of Harry, Ron and Hermonine. In the midst of all these moving and still shots were photos of landscapes, sunsets and a hundred other artistic shots. The sheer number of pictures was almost mind boggling, but the even lines of the frames and the cool gentle colour of the walls kept it from being overwhelming. 

From where he lay in the bed Sirius could see the bedroom door in the middle of the wall, and a series of bookcases in one corner. In front of the bookcases was a large circular rag rug with a very comfortable overstuffed chair on it. This room, Sirius realized was Remus's sanctuary. The house itself was a haven from the horror and pain of his life and past, but this room, this room was sacred ground, ever thing in the room was something that made Remus feel good. Pictures of all those who meant something to him, the soft sheets, the old quilt that Remus had had even in their first year at Hogwarts, the smooth grained bookshelves that Sirius would bet would be lined with his favourite books. 

Sirius almost felt like a defiler in this place. He knew that the emotion he was triggering in Remus had to be anything but pleasant, but here he was asleep on the pew of his sanctuary, like a bum fallen asleep waiting for mass. The luxury and security of the moment now shattered for him, he slipped from the bed barely stifling a groan as every muscle protested at once and he almost wound up on the floor. Steadying himself with a firm hand on the bedpost he straightened until he was standing and wondered if Remus would let him use his bath for a second time in less then ten hours. He hobbled carefully over to the closet near the bed and dug through the various robes, slacks, and shirts hanging there. It surprised him when his hand fell on familiar cloth, and as he looked more closely realized that many of the clothes that hung there were his, resting just beside Remus's just as they had twelve years ago. 

Throat suddenly aching, Sirius snatched down the first robe of his own that his hands came across, as well as a belt that he knew he would need. Pacing back over to the dresser he tore out a pair of old faded muggle jeans that were his, as well as a equally loved T shirt. If the man had had enough emotion left in him he would have been in a fit of fury. Remus had kept his things. How could he have done that, the pain it must have caused him opening the closet and dresser every day to reminders of Sirius's infidelity*. It was like being witness to self inflicted masochism. Sirius jerked on the jeans, that he remembered had once fit him snugly in all the right place, and now, they fit in a loose, relaxed sort of way. The T-shirt was out right baggy on him, but he ignored that as he strapped on his belt notching it as tight as it would go and seeing he would have to add another notch for it to keep his pants well in place. Throwing on his black wizards robe over it all he stormed barefoot out into the living room, intent on reading Remus the riot act for keeping his things, not because he was upset Remus had them, but because it bothered him to think that as many times as Remus had probably moved in those twelve years he had always diligently packed and unpacked Sirius's things, like Sirius was just out of town for a couple weeks.

He stopped cold hand raised mid-gesticulation, mouth half open. Remus was fast asleep, sprawled on the couch like a child too stubborn to go to bed but to tired to stay awake. One bare foot was propped up on the arm of the couch, the other crossed underneath. One hand dangled, fingers grazing the floor, his mouth hung wide open and there was a slight trail of drool at the corner of his mouth. His tawny hair was mused and stuck up at odd angles around his face, sunlight filtering in through the window caught the light sprinkling of hair on his chest… he was gorgeous… and incredibly dorky, all at the same time. Sirius sighed, his thunder stolen. These last twelve years hadn't only been hard on him. Remus had suffered in his own way.

With a self-disgusted shake of his head Sirius padded over to the kitchen looking over the variety of muggle appliances that filled the area. He poked and prodded various mechanical objects muttering under his breath.

"How the hell does a guy get a cup of coffee in this place?"  Sirius grumbled, laying eyes on some contraption labelled 'Mr. Coffee' in little black letters. He frowned and poked at it. "Coffee." He commanded it. When nothing happened he leaned in more closely and pulled out the glass pot. Holding it at arms length he tried again. "Coffee, please." Still nothing. He sighed and tried to recall what he knew about muggle devices from when Lilly Potter had still been alive. Finding the black cord he followed it to where it to the little plate in the wall where it plugged in. Nodding to himself Sirius then looked for a switch labled 'on/off'. It took twenty minutes of fumbling, but soon the odd little muggle appliance was sputtering out coffee into the glass pot. 

"You should have started with the toaster." 

Sirius whirled around reaching for a wand that wasn't there, and hadn't been there in twelve years.

"Relax Siri, it's just me." Remus offered a weary half smile. 

"Yeah well, you shouldn't sneak up on a bloke like that, if I had had my wand…"

"If you had your wand I probably wouldn't have." Remus shrugged tucking his own wand in his back pocket. "Did you sleep well?"

"You should have woke me, I didn't need you to be my nanny."

"Your back hurt?" Remus queried raising his eyebrows as he sauntered over the fridge.

"What? Why?"

"Because that is an awful big chip you've got on your shoulder. Listen, I know you've got problems and this whole 'us' thing is really an issue for you, but must you really be an arse in basic every day conversation? We have been friends since we were old enough to spell the word, I would think you could manage to afford me a little civility for Lilly and James if for no other reason." Remus had been rummaging through the icebox as he spoke, as he finished his diatribe he hopped up onto the counter so his feet dangled as he pulled the lid off a yoghurt cup. 

Sirius stared at his long time friend a moment, for one, the man was, to Sirius, unworldly attractive. For second he had remembered Remus as a rather timid lad, even after they had graduated from Hogwarts, Remus rarely spoke his mind, and when he did it was never as blunt of flippant as that.

"Since when do you talk like that?"

"Talk like what?" The tawny haired man was toying absently with his yoghurt.

"Like a cynical bastard who doesn't have any friends because he is too busy being a cynical bastard to care." Sirius scowled as he poured the freshly made coffee into a mug and adding a good bit more sugar to it then could have possibly been healthy, then set the coffee to stirring itself as be paced.

"I am a cynical bastard who doesn't have any friends." Remus replied with a shrug, licking the yoghurt off the foil lid. "I mean as you can see its not like I have owls beating down my door with invitations to tea."

"Well fine. But you do care. Not that I care if you care, but I can see that you do. And you never used to by cynical…. And the bastard part was just for good measure." Sirius picked up his mug and was promptly conked on the nose by the handle of the spoon as it continued to whirl away. "Oy! Stop that!" The spoon stopped and Sirius removed it before taking a sip of the coffee flavoured sugar. 

"I hadn't taken it to heart. I'm well aware I'm not a bastard, with or without your reassurance. And you are right I never was cynical, but that was twelve years ago. Its not like I've just been hanging around in stasis waiting for you to come back. Further more, I strong dislike the painful formality and defensiveness of this conversation as a whole. I feel like I'm duelling, not eating breakfast. I suppose this is why divorce rarely ends well." Remus mused.

'We cant be divorced, we were never married."

"Oh yes, excuse me, we only lived together, bought furniture together, picked out curtains together, snogged each other senseless, and were in love."

"Were." Sirius gave Remus a hard look that he did not feel. Damn it, he would not fall back into this mans arms. He would not. Remus should have stood by him, no matter what the evidence said. Real friends, lovers, trusted each other! Sirius wasn't even aware of himself turning a blind eye to the doubts that he had reciprocated in his partner.

Remus set down his yoghurt with deceptive calm, positioning it carefully on the counter and making sure his spoon was at just the right angle before looking over to Sirius. "You have made it abundantly clear we are through. I told you last night, I still love you, and I always will love you, I'm sorry if that doesn't fit into the plan right now, but that's how I feel. I'm keeping up my end of the bargain and not trying to touch you, or do anything to imply we are anything other then civil acquaintances, will you at least please stop rubbing my face in the fact that I have lost you, again."

Padfoot was silent a long moment looking down at his bare feet on the hardwood floor, his translucent skin in stark contrast to the finished hardwood. "You're right. I'm sorry Remus." 

Remus could only nod as he picked up his breakfast and commenced stirring it, his heart blocking his ability to swallow or breath correctly, his vision fast becoming veiled with tears. If Remus had still believed in a loving and involved deity he would have been screaming at it until his throat bled, but he had long ago learned that he could rage and rage all he liked, but that he would cause less change then the sea against the shore, and almost as quickly. He closed his eyes as he slid from the counter, tossing his spoon into the sink, and his remaining yoghurt into the trash before brushing past his once-mate, and walking out the front door. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Moony…." Remus stood in his own front garden, shoulders hunched, fists balled at his sides as he tried to swallow his pain. Why had stupid, stubborn Sirius insisted in following him?

"You know for a guy who professes not to care, you seem to be real interested in how I'm feeling and what I'm doing." Remus snapped, wrapping his arms around himself as he stared at the white lilies growing in his garden.

            
"No matter how much I don't care, I wouldn't leave anyone to just wallow in their own personal misery like this." Sirius replied keeping his distance. He had been ready to apologize, but Remus's sharp reply had him wanting a good fight. 

'I'm wallowing? What the hell Sirius! Just because you are completely devoid of emotion doesn't mean the rest of us are. Forgive me for having the nerve to be hurt over all this. You know who is wallowing Sirius! Its you! You are wallowing. Poor Sirius, had to live with the dementors, wah wah wah. Yeah it sucked so why do you insist in perpetuating your imprisonment and acting like a total emotional eunuch!"

"Hey fuck you!  What do you know about it anyway you self-absorbed bastard! You haven't been there. You don't know what its like! No you don't get to be hurt! This is about me!'' Sirius shouted back, crushing grass beneath a heel as he stamped.

"Its always all about you Sirius! Always! You think I don't understand isolation? You think I don't understand pain, rejection? Let me tell you something, Dementors aren't the only emotional leeches out there. Living a lie, every day, being a total outcast because of something that is out of your control, being accused of something you would never, ever do! Stop me when I get to some part that you didn't experience." Remus growled, trying not to cry. He had done his best to not focus on these aspects of his life, tried to pretend that his seclusion was of his own choosing. Fallacies that add bricks to his heart just as fast as the truth of the matter. The truth was, he was a werewolf, vile and unspeakable, he was a poof which was near as bad, the truth was if he had tried to move into a wizarding village after his very public humiliation at Hogwarts, he would have been run out with sticks, pitchforks and torches, and not the kind that run on batteries. 

"And you want to know what else, Siri, my dear?" He spat bitterly. "I had to live with your betrayal. Your infidelity. I had no anchor to cling to, I have nothing left, nothing at all, but a bunch of framed pictures tacked to the wall. I am not Harry's godfather, James and Lillie didn't see me fit for that… just like I wasn't seen fit to be their secret keeper, just like the only reason I was allowed to linger at the edges of your friendship like a whipped dog, was because I was _your_ whipped dog." Remus spun away again, hands clenching and unclenching by his sides, nails digging into his palm along the ruts of old crescent shaped scars, his shoulders heaving, as he panted trying to keep himself in check.

"What?" Sirius recoiled, like he had been struck, brows drawing together. '_Allowed to linger'?_ Was that how his dear Moony truly felt? That he had been only tolerated? Where were these insecurities coming from? He had never seen his friend, his lover like this, never seen this anger and rage, this self depreciating loathing, and he wondered briefly, if all those scars on his narrow body, those deep lines he scratched into himself were really because of pain and need…. Or if it was simple self-mutilation.

"Maybe I have been naïve…. Tell me Sirius, I was really just a stand in for James wasn't I. You couldn't shag him, so you shagged me? You really don't love me any more, because you never did." Remus wasn't sure what he was even saying any more, it was like the shackles of the pain that was the legacy of his lycanthropy, that he had drug along behind him dutifully were suddenly strangling him. Like he had found some part of him, that was tender and delicate, and had been kept over the years by his friends, carefully tended and cultivated and made to survive, had, in the last decade, rotted, and had only just been noticed now. That brick wall around his heart had let out just a little of what it was build to hide. 

"Moony! Get a hold of yourself!" Sirius was appalled; he grabbed Remus's shoulders and gave him a shake hard enough that he heard the werewolf's teeth click together. "It was never, ever like that. James loved you, as much as he loved me, so did Lillie, you may have been closer to her then any of us. You know I loved you and well. You know that Remus. I don't know what's broke down inside you, but you better fix it. Because I sure as hell cant." 

Sirius's grip on his shoulders was painfully tight, tight enough to leave bruises but Remus didn't try to draw away, barely even noticed. "You're right. I should have remained silent. Remote Remus." He chuckled dryly. "Don't fret Sirius. Don't fret. I will make no demands of you. I will heal. Go on now, your emotion is showing."

Sirius released his grip slowly and took a step back, not sure what had happened, only knowing that the spurting vein of hurt had been capped and no longer rushed out…. But that coldness…. Sirius shivered and took another step back, he didn't care, he reminded himself as he turned and walked back into the small cabin, mind set on tending Buckbeak, hoping whatever clamp Remus had used to close that vein would hold.

Authors Note: Sorry on the long delay to get this finished things have been topsy turvey lately, with any luck things will go more smoothly now.

  


* * *

* _ **in·fi·del·i·ty**  
Pronunciation: __"in-f&-'de-l&-tE, -(")fI-__  
Function: noun  
Inflected Form(s): plural **-ties**  
Date: 15th century  
**1** **:** lack of belief in a religion  
__2 a : unfaithfulness to a moral obligation__ **: disloyalty b** **:** marital unfaithfulness.   _I am choosing the second definition listed.


	4. Sound and Fury

Disclaimer: not mine, if they were I wouldn't be a poor college student

Starfall, Moonset

By: Irish

Chapter Four: Sound and Fury

A week passed in stony silence. The only words spoken between them those of dire function 'pass the butter' and 'where's the salt'. Remus cooked for them most evenings, generally some kind of soup, as that was his normal diet and it was what Remus thought would settle best in Sirius's stomach. Feeding the two of them his staples were running out quickly and he was becoming worried about feeding them both. Remus did the best he could to make the soups go further, using an old trick he learned from his mother and adding dumplings to everything. Dumplings were little more then flour and water made into a paste, and flour was cheap and lasted for a long time. Remus also made biscuits after the same fashion, but by Friday, he was combining soup bones from past meals hoping that there would be enough to flavor the water and make it broth. The silence was starting to stretch just as thin.

The silence weighed on him heavily, built small annoyances into large resentments, built scar into gapping wounds. Each hour they passed by with words unspoken was another lash of the whip. As far as Remus could tell Padfoot didn't mind, but Remus felt as though he were slowly going mad. The final descent of a slope he had started to slip down since his first change. 

As the old, spent soup bones sat in the simmering water with the last ragtag ends of turkey and chicken meat, as much fat as anything, Remus slipped into his bedroom, a place he had barely set foot in since Sirius had arrived and taken it over. He opened the closet and dug out the old leather case, held together with spell-o-tape, bumper stickers and a prayer. He laid the case on his unmade bed, the puff of air that rose from the mattress smelling heavily of Sirius. Clicking open the three small latches he cracked the case, laying over the lid on the bed and lifting out the well tended six string. He lifted it from its stained velvet bed, sliding the braided strap across his chest so the guitar lay across his back. He shut the case and moved across the room and through the cabin, seating himself on the creaking wooden porch.

Remus was from a wizarding family, not unlike the Weaslie's, too many, too proud, and too poor. Too poor to buy the silence of others about Remus's affliction, too many to go unnoticed, and too proud to take charity when it was needed. Remus had inherited that pride as sure as he inherited his gaunt frame and tawny hair. After he had graduated from Hogwarts, he had learned that, eventually it was found out exactly what he was, and was pushed to the very fringes of wizarding society, but unwilling to take the charity offered from Dumbledor has Hagrid had, he had learned to live at the edge of muggle society as well, keeping a foot in each world.

He had discovered many things that he truly adored about the muggle world. One was cooking, by hand, with no help from magic but a few simple appliances. Another was their music, a love he had developed even in his Hogwarts years, listening to the muggle children's cassette tapes on a gerry-rigged tape player, as much magic as muggle. It was those songs; simple folky songs that came to mind as he sat down on his front porch bring the guitar into his lap, his hands finding its smooth wood and tight strings. He strummed once, with the pad of his thumb, wincing at discord. He tuned carefully, going by ear, his tuning fork lost somewhere along the way. When he was satisfied he smiled slightly and finger picked a couple riffs, improving a bit. His instinct was to play something melancholy and crooning, but he shoved the urge aside. No wallowing. He cleared his throat and his plucking took on a more certain tone.

"Well I'm aiming for heaven…. But probably wind up down in hell, where upon this altar I will hang my guilt ridden head, but its time I'll take before I begin, three sheets to the wind, three sheets to the wind. Rebels are we, though heavy our hearts shall always be…. And no ball or chain prison shall keep, were the rebels of the sacred heart." IT was a quick paced song of Irish Rebellion, that took a lot of concentration to play and was fast enough to make his arm sore as he tore the hell out of this thumb making the strings shout.  As he came to the last verse is slowed slightly, allowing him to catch his breath and rest his arm before blasting into the very last line. When the song was finished he fell back on the splintery porch catching his breath, smiling slightly to himself. His mother had been of the Irish Republic, and though he steered clear of the whole mess himself, he had the heart of an Irish rebel, and the song reminded him of the Marauders. Clearing his throat, he toned it down; giving in to the more relaxed folk sound that was his usual style.

He played the sun down, singing his heart and mind calm, and his throat raw. By the time he stood up again, his hips creaked dangerously and he almost found himself face first in his dooryard, but he managed to keep his balance. If the soup was ever going to be ready it would be ready now… and if it wasn't… then Remus supposed they would have water and vegetables… sort of a chunky tea. He leaned his guitar against the wall as he moved over to the kitchen, taking down two bowls that didn't match and two soupspoons; he added a glass and a napkin to each setting and declared the table set. He didn't need to call for Sirius to come to the table. He had been sitting on Remus couch _cum_ bed and had stood when he had heard the clink of crockery.

Sirius said nothing as he sat in his usual place at the table and waited for Remus to serve him. Remus, though resenting Sirius's assumption that he would wait on him, also said nothing, ladling the weak looking stew into the dark haired mans bowl, then into his own… there would be enough for about a second half bowl. Thank god for dumplings. 

Spoons clinked against bowls in silence, the same unending silence. The soup was somewhere between hot water and vegetables and soup. The extra salt he had added hid the worst of it, in fact Remus barely noticed.

"The soup is thin." 

When Sirius spoke Remus almost spit the food item in question across the table, so startled was he. He let the silence linger a moment as he slowly turned his eyes to Sirius, heart beating hard in his chest as he resisted the urge to whip his bowl at the man.

"Thinner then what they gave you at Azkaban?" Remus snipped, eyes hard. Sirius's gray eyes rose to meet his, snapping with anger. It had been a low blow and Remus knew it, but one swift kick in the bollocks deserved another. 

"Are you calling me ungrateful mate?" Sirius asked, deadly calm.

"But of course not. Just suggesting that if you were going to bitch and moan that you could either pitch in a bit for the groceries, or dry you arse." Remus replied politely.

There was a beat. Neither moved nor spoke, neither blinked, each body tense and waiting. Then time snapped. A bowl flew across the room and shattered in a spray of soup against a far wall, the light table was upturned, and the rest of the crockery crashed to the floor. Remus had processed each action in turn but before he could draw his wand, Sirius tackled him to the floor and the length of wood went skittering across the linoleum. 

Remus hit the floor with a thud, Sirius atop him, one bony hand on his throat, the other cuffing him across the face. The werewolf didn't take time to think about his actions, he arched his hips, with a hard upward thrust bucking Sirius off balance as he pitched his weight to the side, rolling so he now sat straddled atop of Sirius, his own hand drew back of its own volition, the back of his hand cracking Sirius's lips, his other hand lashing roughly in Sirius's hair, controlling his head with it. 

They grappled rolling across the floor, each trying to keep the upper hand as they rolled over shards of crockery and over cooked vegetables. 

"Oy! Cut it out!" Remus yelped as his head was slammed into the floor, his elbow caught Sirius in the stomach.

"Oof! Lay off!" Soup soaked through their clothes, as they bumped into the over turned table, legs and hands grappling for dominance. They were a fairly even match in weight, in a way they wouldn't have been for Sirius's stint in Azkaban, but Remus who was simply stronger right now won out, pinning Sirius's hands over his head, his legs pinning Padfoot's. 

Remus growled low in his throat a sneer of triumph marring his lips as his cheek started to swell and bruise from the hits Sirius had gotten in. 

"Remus, let me up!" Sirius suddenly felt a band of panic tighten across his chest, he was pinned he couldn't escape, next they would rip his clothes off, he had to get away! "Let me up!"

"No way! You broke my dishes! Its not like I have piles of them lying around you know. Not all of us grew up in the Black Mansion." Remus panted, missing the not e of panic in his ex lover's voice.

"Fuck! Moony! Fuck! Let me up… god, please let me up!" Sirius thrashed under him wildly. Wide-eyed Remus scrambled off him.            

"Jesus, Siri, I'm sorry I didn't think-" The sentence was cut off, and so nearly, was the tip of Remus's tongue as Sirius fist smashed into his face. Remus felt the bone of his nose crunch and he reeled backwards, hands coming over his face as he felt a hot gush of blood poor from his nose, filling his mouth and sinuses. 

The world hitched and spun as he slumped to the floor fighting the rolling tide of darkness washing again and again over his eyes, turning his world to haze and silence. He didn't remember scrambling away, but when his vision and hearing started to come back, he found himself wedged in a corner, hands over his mouth and nose as though he could catch it and keep it from dripping into his robes. 

Sirius watched in total and utter shock as deep-wine blood flowed between Moony's fingers. It wasn't a drip, or an ooze; it was a flood, the front of his shirt starting to soak through with the leakage from the wizard's hands. He had done that, he had the ache in his knuckles to prove that to himself, but he didn't remember it. 

"Jesus…God, Remmy, shit, I'm so sorry…" Sirius rambled as he scuttled across the kitchen floor after the tawny haired man, avoiding the trail of blood he left. 

"Fug oo." Remus replied mushily from behind his hands.

"Yes, fine, but let's get this taken care of first, god, I didn't even realize… I didn't mean to…." Sirius couldn't help but ramble as snagged a dishtowel from the counter. Remus swatted at his hands twice with a bloody palm, but Sirius dodged easily enough. Finally Remus subsided, just leaning back as Padfoot folded the cloth over his nose, cupping it there with tender fingers, his other hand supporting the back of Remus's tawny head. 

"I'm so sorry Remmy. Truly… I didn't even know it was you, I didn't even know I had done it." Sirius's heart was still pounding in his chest. Something had serious gone shite to shingle. The fingers of the hand supporting Remus's head stroked sweaty locks of hair, as the towel started to bleed through. "Oh hell… Remmy… I hurt you badly…. Is it broken?'

"I fing fo." 

"You think so?" 

Remus nodded. Sirius broke off into a long string of curses and swears that made Remus blush, and he was certainly no virgin by any stretch of the imagination. 

"Can I use your wand to fix you up? I won't hurt you, I promise…. I'm sorry Remmy, I just snapped… I just… I didn't know it was you…." Sirius fumbled for the wand, snatching it up. "Hold still, just a moment.''

Remus sighed as he just leaned back against the wall, his bloody hands lounging listlessly on the floor. He felt the blood run down over his lips and did his best not to lick it away. He didn't favour the taste of his own blood, or any, but it was a hard impulse to resist. Sirius pointed the wand at his listing nose.

"Um… septus repairo?" Sirius suggested. Remus winced knowing what came of that particular half-baked spell was going to be unpleasant. His nose straightened into its original position with a sickening crunch and grind. Remus grunted, trying not to scream, the sound and feeling of his nose sliding back to normal was worse then the actual pain. A rigid brace and a series of bandages lashed themselves over Remus's nose, locking it in place. 

"Well at least it didn't fall off." He muttered to himself. 

"Shit… I'm bollixing this all up… was that too bad? I know it's not great but its better then it was right? Here…" He started to wipe the blood from Remus's face with tender hands, muttering 'shit' repeatedly under his breath as he cleaned away the worst of it.

"Stop, Sirius, stop for the love of Merlin, before you make it any worse." Remus groaned. His face throbbed in a hundred places; Sirius was looking pretty chewed up himself. "Listen… this isn't going well. We are going to kill each other. I should have known, should have listened to Dumbledor. I will send an owl to him in the morning, so he can find another place to hide you. This isn't working." The werewolf sat up and pulled off his blood soaked shirt and dropped it to the side, wiping his hands off on it. 

"Wait? What? You want me to leave?" Sirius's heart hadn't had time to fully settle in his chest before it started throbbing frantically again, a sinking feeling coming over him. 

"You don't want to be here." Remus said with a shrug as he started to get carefully to his feet, wincing. H moved over to the icebox and pulled open the freezer. He tossed an ice back to Sirius and dumped some ice cubes in a plastic bag for himself, stumbling across the kitchen to his couch and flopping down unceremoniously. Sirius followed quickly, sitting on the floor his back against the couch.

Sirius was starting to see he had fucked this up, in a real big way. Even if he couldn't be lovers with Remus again… he needed a friend right now, needed one more then he needed anything else. If he didn't have some one to lean on right now, even a little, he wouldn't make it through. He would probably kill himself, or go stark raving mad, or just die.

"You are right Remus… I thought I didn't…. I thought, mistakenly, that I would be better on my own. The dementors Remmy… they pollute your mind… turn everything that once was your safety net into a row of spikes. That fear of betrayal they placed in me, is obviously still working."

"You can't blame the dementors for every bad thing you do for the rest of your life." The bag of ice that was currently Remus's face said.

"I'm not. It's my own stupidity for buying into it. Remus, I need you, as a friend. I know that, because when you talked, just now, of turning me out… you might as well have stabbed me… I mean, not that you don't have every right to… because I have been an arse… and I will continue to be an arse, but right this moment, I am motivated, mostly by fear, to be bang on honest with you. Do you understand me?" Sirius was speaking very quickly, wanting to get this all out before the fear faded to numbness and he no longer cared. "I am begging you Remus… as broken as I am, dead begging you, not to turn me out, to have patients with me to help me in spite of myself. Please? Please Remus?"

_That bloody fucking self centred arse hole._ Remus growled in his mind, as his heart was tugged and twisted, and bent from shape. He couldn't say no to that. No matter what it cost him, he was too loyal, and too much in love, to deny that plea. He wasn't Judas.            

"Aye, fine, yeh fookin' arse. I am goin'tah live tah regret dis." 

Sirius winced as the cultured mostly British accent he normally affected lifted into a lilting west Irish accent that was Remus's true tone, he had really pissed the man off. He knelt next to the couch, lifting the ice bag carefully from Remus's face. 

"Thank you Remus… you've saved my life, again. I will repay you, someday." He bent and kissed the pale forehead that was icy to the touch.

"I will just put it on your tab. Now put the ice back on my face so I don't have to look at yours." 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"I don't know what to do Dumbledor… I just don't know. The man has some serious issues, and my own unrequited love isn't helping the bloody situation!" Remus stormed as he paced the head masters office. 

"Mind you language, please, Remus, this is unlike you." The aging wizard said softly as he watched the werewolf beat a path in the floor.

"Sorry headmaster… but… I don't know what to do." Remus raked a hand through his hair roughly, sending it askew. He strode to the chair in front of Albus's desk and sat in it with purpose, as though willing himself to hold still. It didn't work, his left leg immediately started to jump and jitter. Remus folded his hands over it to help keep himself still as he looked at the beard across from him, hoping for wisdom and guidance. Talking to Albus was a bit like talking to god… or maybe it was just the beard. 

"You are in a very tough spot, Remus, very tough indeed. But it is not the first. There are other things jading this issue, are there not?" 

Remus took a deep breath. "I still love him. I know you knew that, but… I remember waking up every morning… for years, and hoping that when I went down to the kitchen, he would be there, drinking coffee and reading the paper. I went to bed every night praying that… some evidence would be found, that he would be cleared, that I would have my friends and lover back, or at least one of them. But….Albus… there never was, no one came back… until now."

"But it wasn't the reunion you expected?" One white caterpillar eyebrow rose.

"It was what I expected, but not what I wanted. We've spent the last week not even on speaking terms. He broke my nose the other day…"

"He hit you?" The other furry caterpillar jointed the first.

"No, I mean yes, but not like that… we got in a row… just a harmless boys tussle… but I pinned him… he snapped… They did things to him in Azkaban." Remus's sighed and caught his hand on the way up to rake through his hair again. He stopped it and returned it to his lap; if he didn't stop tearing through his hair like that he would go bald. 

"Yes… the Dementors didn't used to be allowed to do that. Times have changed." Albus sighed and shook his head. Remus had a feeling though that despite the calm gesture, the old Wizard had had more then row with the ministry over the issue.

"He needs me but he doesn't want me. I love him yet, headmaster."

"Remus…. Dear Remus, I remember you when you were nothing but skinned knees and torn robes. I have seen you over come the impossible. I have seen you become a man, with an integrity and honesty that I have seen exemplified in only a very few, and you have done it in spite the Wizarding Worlds worst prejudges. I have utter faith in your ability."

Remus felt tears well in his eyes, tears that had been absent for ten years or more; a well that he thought fully tapped brimming anew. "You know just what you are doing don't you? You play with our lives… my life. I know you hold genuine tenderness for Harry… as you did for his father and godfather, but you move us like pieces on a board, rooks and knights and bishops… and me. The pawn. You know what you do and you hide it behind a big beard and soft eyes. But I have always been your tool and crusade, and you know I will do what you wish with out you asking… because you have given me some semblance of respect and left me my dignity, and so pitiful am I that I will subsist on that. But do not tell me you have always had my best interest at heart, I would not have you perjure yourself and my intelligence." Remus took a deep breath and steadied himself, hands now gripping the arms of his chair as he looked beyond the white hair that was the wizards face, body tense.

"My denial will do neither of us any good, because you would not believe it and it would not be whole truth. I have had to make many decisions not for the good of one, but for the good of all. But don't be fool in thinking you were with out say, you have always been given a choice." Dumbledor said evenly, his voice steady and gentle as he looked over the rims of his half moon glasses.

"And what choice is there in desperation?" Remus shot back, jaw so tight his teeth hurt.

"And I would ask you the same. What choice is there in desperation and in desperate times? We all do our best Remus." Dumbledor brushed his hands together as though washing away the issue, passing it off, letting it go. He picked up a pouch from the corner of his desk and looked at it, then at Remus.

"Don't you dare give that to me." Remus growled, hearing the galleons clinking inside. 

"Do not further insult me-"

"No. Do not further insult me, Remus. I think you have said entirely enough today. I know how you feel about charity, and I give you none. These are galleons from Sirius bank vault, you used to let him contribute in half to the household, as I recall, has that changed?"

"No." Remus slumped back in his chair, closing his eyes. Check and mate. 

"Good. Then here. You are feeding both of you after all. And I doubt the odd jobs you do for the neighbouring farms will cover both your continued sustenance. I will send a sum by owl from Sirius's vault once a month." Dumbledor held out the pouch and Remus took it, slipping it into his robes. "Is there anything else you feel that needs to be said, Remus?"

Remus looked over the old man, ginger eyes taking in his god like visage. "Yes. I am sorry headmaster… I let my mouth run faster then my brain. My apologise." 

"No apology necessary. Life has been no easier on you then it has on any of us… maybe less so. I do have faith in you.''

"Thank you sir." Remus stood on weak knees. "Have a good day."

"You as well Remus, you as well." 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"What would you like for dinner? We have groceries… not steak or anything, mind, but enough ingredients for things other then soup." Remus asked from where he stood surveying the cupboards. 

"Do we have some pasta, maybe?" Sirius asked hopefully, peering over the back of the couch where he was sprawled. "Or potatoes?"

"Pasta, potatoes, rice, vegetables, ground beef, stew meat, chicken, corn meal…"

"How about just chicken breasts or something, with rice and vegetables." Sirius suggested.

The facsimile of normalcy that they were living under was a good site better then the cold war of the week before, but it wasn't comfortable, not really. The had fallen into some sort of schedule, as much as could be had when Remus's work consisted of mucking stalls and hauling hay for the surrounding farms. Just enough to keep himself in clothes and food. Albus had not insulted him by giving him an extravagant amount of wizarding money, his budgeting would have to be careful, but that part he was used to. 

They addressed each other with painful formality a careful dance around the shattered eggshells of their former life together. No more Remmy and Siri, or Padfoot and Moony. Only Sirius and Remus… or sometimes 'mate' in their more casual moments. They still spoke rarely, largely out of lack of having any words to say to each other, no words to bridge the gap of years.

"Sure thing Mate." Remus nodded, moving about to gather the things for the requested meal. He heard Sirius rise from the couch; they often cooked the evening meal together in a certain nostalgic way. 

They moved around each other from stove to fridge, fridge to sink, carefully choreographed so not even their robes touched, never in a position that contact might become a possibility. The scent of the baking chicken and sautéing vegetables filled the small cabin as they continued their silent dance. The table was set, water was poured into clear glasses, the food was served, each sitting gracefully and unfolding their napkins on their lap like it was a formal dinner, and the silverware wasn't mismatched. 

Remus got through three slowly chewed bites in silence before Sirius voice carried like thunder on the wind, the quiet, deep rolling, that took a moment to process and believe.

"You never came to see me in Azkaban."

Remus chewed the rice in his mouth carefully, as though it were a choking hazard and the question was unimportant, before answering, slowly. "Would you have wanted me to?"

"I don't know… it would have given me hope." Sirius shrugged, pushing around his vegetables. 

"There is no hope in that place."

"There would have been if I had seen you."

A long pause stretched silence around the room as thick as stirred cream. Remus took a bite of chicken like dust in his mouth. He washed it down with bitter water. "And if it had been me in there?"

"I would not have come. You would have gone mad in days. The wolf…" Sirius trailed off, not sure if he was still allowed the privilege of speaking to that aspect to Remus's nature.

"I don't think I would have made it to Azkaban. I think I would have had an accident on the way there." Remus shrugged. "I thought you were guilty."

"I thought I was too." 

"I don't know how to help you." Remus took another drink of water, washing down barely tasted vegetables. 

"I don't know either… don't loose hope in me. I need your faith." Sirius swallowed convulsively. 

"I have no faith to lend." Remus shrugged and stood bring his plate to the sink, standing there long, with his back to Sirius. "You have nightmares."

"You've stopped waking me from them." It was hard to tell if their was hurt in Sirius's voice. Remus suspected there was.

"I thought I was unwelcome."

"Yes. But when has that ever stopped you. You've never let others desires stop you from doing what you think needs to be done." Sirius stood as well, leaving his plate as he moved over to Remus, touching a patch of grey in ginger hair. 

"Do not. Do not give me your touch when you will take it back in a moment." Remus's voice was soft, calm… agony.

"Will you give me yours then?" Sirius asked softly, almost pleaded, his breath held as he waited.

Remus turned to the man slowly, looking over the boy he once knew, grown to a man, and headed for middle age. He saw grey where it wasn't before, lines where it had once been smooth, bone where there had once been muscle… and pain where there had once been love. 

"As if I could deny you anything." Remus whispered. His hand came up of its own volition, smoothing a stray strand from Sirius's face, before embracing him gently, tucking the mans head against his shoulder as he felt him tremble. 

"Maybe you should." Sirius voice cracked on the edge of tears, his shoulders shook with barely bridled emotion.

"Never." Remus gathered him close in loose arms, so that Sirius wouldn't feel restrained. There was a soft breaking sound, a deep drawing of breath before Sirius trembled in silent tears as thunder rolled in the hills. 

Authors Note: Yikes, well that took a bit o' time. I have no idea if its canon to have Remus be Irish, but, I wanted to so there :P We have no idea where Remus is from, so I don't see how it can be uncanon. Anyway, I also happen to be looking for a beta for my Sirius/Remus work. Anyone who wants the dubious honour, drop me a line gypsysenigma@aol.com . Thanks for your patients. 


	5. Liberal Indulgence

Disclaimer: Don't own them, if I did I wouldn't be a poor college student Starfall, Moonset 

By: Irish

Chapter Five:

 Liberal Indulgence 

'Do you want something in your tea? Help put you to sleep?" Remus offered as he took the kettle from the burner, pouring it over steeped herbs.

"Yeah, why not? You only got that cheap shite?" Sirius replied from the couch where he sat idly flipping through a Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook. 

"Well it's not like I've got the money for quality stuff. Besides, this will be buried under the tea, you won't even taste it." Remus said, tipping a bit of whiskey into each mug before adding honey. He was not much of a drinker himself. He didn't like the way it made him feel, if he got drunk enough so he didn't feel the way it turned his legs to jelly and his stomach to water, he spent the next day with his head in a bucket. He handed a mug to Sirius before sitting carefully on the couch.

"You know, I should take the couch, you've been out here for near two weeks now." The convict observed, running his hands over the dilapidated cushion. "Not real civil of me."

Sirius had been gaining weight steadily since he had arrived to stay with Remus. He had some color back, not much, but enough so he did not look like a walking corpse. He had also gained around ten pounds, rounding out his sharpest angles, and turning his human again. He looked handsome. Remus sighed softly shaking his head and looking away in to the fire. Looking at what could have been would get him nowhere fast.

"I don't mind really, you are the guest I suppose." Remus offered a small smile in his general direction, not wanting to look at his face again.

"I feels weird to be a guest in my own bed." Sirius said softly. "I feel like I've invaded your life, displaced you and dislodged you from your normal routine." Sirius's voice was soft, concerned. It made Remus ache. Things had been better over the last few days, they spoke, Remus would slip into the bedroom at night to sooth Sirius from his nightmares… and he was fairly sure that Sirius found it satisfying, fulfilling, to some degree… but he felt like he was mining an empty mountain, divining for what wasn't there.

"Sirius… I won't banish you to the couch. You have more then earned a few weeks in a real bed, humble as the roof over it may be. It was your bed… is your bed…. too. I just kept it because…" The werewolf trailed off with a shrug. Because it was Sirius's and his… Moony and Padfoot's.

"Hey no reason to get a new bed…just because…" _your lover got thrown in Azkaban_. It was Padfoot's turn to shrug. 

"Well… since we never formally… you know, ended things… technically I suppose you are entitled to half of everything here anyway, so…" Remus raised a hand indicating the belongings, most of which they had picked out together, around the small cabin then dropping his hand back to his thigh with a thump.

"I wish you would stop acting like we are divorced. We aren't." Sirius looked away this time, into the fire.  

"What are we then? We certainly are no longer lovers. Our friendship, though deeply loyal, is not on easy terms at the moment. If we aren't divorced, I don't know what we are." Remus took a long, less then polite, sip of his tea. He didn't feel the whiskey until it hit his stomach spreading like molten lead in is gut. 

"I don't know what we are Remus… but… damnit… this has been totally bollixed up… I swear to Merlin it was you… thoughts of you… that kept me from killing myself in there. I clung to what memories I had left like… like they were some fucking life preserver… and now I have you, right here, and I don't know what to do about it." Sirius raked a hand through his hair, before taking his own deep draw on the hard tea. Setting it aside and burying his fingers in his hair, tugging at it lightly. Remus recognized the gesture, for whatever reason Sirius had always found it soothing. 

"I can't tell you what we are. I just… divorce just feels like the right word." Remus shrugged. "I feel like the biggest arse in the world to say this… like I have some right to grievance after what you've been through… but Sirius… the last thing I had of you… were those last few months… the fights…" Remus looked away.

"God… Remmy…Remmy…" Sirius moaned softly, closing his eyes tightly. "I know… I know, don't think I didn't relive everyone of those fights…a hundred times. We both said terrible things… but, I think… my words were worse, because… I believed what I said then."

Remus stared into the fire, clutching his mug in both hands. "Here… let me hand you the knife, I think my heart is right about here." Remus tapped his chest as he whispered, his own eyes squinting shut like he had been slapped. "I'm always glad to here when people think so highly of me… really, you're making me blush."

"Remus… damn it… okay, what I meant to say is that… I was scared enough to believe it _then_. Which is not at all to say I do now. God… it kills me to remember the things I said to you. I am sorry…" Sirius drained his tea in a quick gulp, before scooting over closer to Remus, slowly prying his fingers off the mug. "Remus… look at me." Sirius whispered, setting the mug aside, holding Moony's clammy hands in his own. "I have wronged you, irrelevant of where I have been the last twelve years. I said and did things that were stupid and insensitive and just plain wrong, and I am sorry for that."

Sirius's voice was just above a whisper, his eyes earnest and sincere as he gazed at Remus. The tawny haired man felt his heart tighten, and his pain center in his throat as he swallowed convulsively.

"Why do you say these things, Padfoot? Why do you say these things that give me false hope. Why try and lance scars?" His own voice was choked, and horse, as he tried to hold Sirius's gaze, tried not to let his eyes fill with tears that threatened. 

"Because I loved you once, and loved you well. And I would see you believe that again." 

Their hands were sweating… cold and hot at once, the point of contact between them. Neither man had been touched in a decade; the longing for contact running so deep that neither of them felt it. 

Sirius leaned in slowly, leaning over Remus's drawn up knees, to kiss the corner of his mouth softly, feeling the wolf's hands tighten in his own, startled and clutching. One of them gasped softly, maybe both. Sirius leaned back again, looking Remus over, seeing his tension, his fear and need, his vulnerability, and god but he wanted all of it.

Slowly he laced the fingers of his right hand with his once-lovers, drawing the hand over Remus's head, trapping it, pinning it against the arm of the couch as he leaned in again, watching his lashes flutter against his cheeks like the wings of a bird against snow. He kissed each eye lid, thin and delicate with exhaustion, softer then the petals of flowers, kissing the faint purple outline on the bridge of a tender nose, kissing the wet salty drop as it cut across Remus's cheek.

"Sirius…" it was protest…and permission. Remus straightened one leg, letting the other fall open, drawing Sirius to him, to rest between the cradle of his legs. He rubbed his palm against Sirius's, their fingers tangled over his head. His freed hand clutched at Sirius's robes.

"Shhh…" Sirius's lips found his lovers, like a deer to water. The first kiss was soft, full of hesitation and apology. Remus's breath hitched at the light contact and Sirius felt himself flush all over. He lay down against Moony, mostly atop him, lying between his legs, against his chest. When Remus cocked his head to the side so their noses wouldn't bump, it was all the invite Sirius ever needed, and he laid claim to lips he had not tasted in a lifetime. 

Remus couldn't believe he was submitting to this, wanting this, aching for it. He wasn't just letting Sirius kiss him, he was encouraging it, kissing back, and had half a mind to reverse their positions and take charge of this, to plunder Sirius mouth and body. But the amimagus had made his want for dominance exceedingly clear in the way he pinned Remus's hand over his head, demanding submission. And Remus wanted to submit. He clutched at Sirius's robe as he allowed his lips to part to Sirius's tongue, his own seeking it. 

Sirius's hand scrabbled against his friends shirt, tugging clumsily at the buttons, forcing it open to stroke at the damp flesh at the base of Remus's neck, feeling where his pulse jumped and lurched, here his breath came ragging, trailing lower, trailing down shoving aside buttons in his wake, baring Remus to him.

Remus's own fingers followed suit with out permission from his brain, independently working the lacings at Sirius's throat, arching up into his heavy caress, quivering with want, and fear.

Sirius moved his mouth lower, working over Remus's neck and collarbone, quickly headed south on his chest, destined for the hard nub of a nipple.

Remus swallowed convulsively. This wasn't right, this wouldn't work, they couldn't do this. The hand in Sirius's shirt flattened against his chest, pushing. "Sirius…"

"Shhh…"

"Sirius, stop." Remus managed shakily, pushing more steadily.

"Stop? Remus… I thought this is what you wanted… I want it…god I want it." Padfoot moaned, moving back to Remus's neck only to be pushed away again.   

"Yes, stop Sirius… please stop. We can't… are you ready to wake up beside me? Every day for the rest of your life? Because we can't take this back. If we make love, and I won't have my heart broken again. Are you ready to deal with this?" Remus's voice, though shaky with bottled passion, was firm.

The silence lingered between them, Sirius poised over Remus, panting heavily, dark eyes black in the dancing light from the fireplace, as his gaze met Moony's.

"No. I'm not. I'm not ready to make love… I just…" Sirius trailed off, letting himself collapse against Moony, resting his head on his shoulder.

"You just want to be touched." Remus whispered, stroking long black locks gently.

"Yes…. god yes…"

"I can give that to you with out sex. Besides you would probably go loopers when my pants came off and punch me in the face again." It was a sorry attempt at jest that drew no humor from his companion.

"You're right. I'm killing you, aren't I Moony?"

"Your not that heavy."

"No. I mean, I am killing you." Sirius sighed, slowly levering himself off his once-lover. "I just keep hurting you again and again."

"Yeah… but maybe I will be able to pull us both up before we crash and burn." The tawny haired man shrugged. "I think that tea is working too well, Padfoot, your better half is showing."

"Hey no ones on all the time." Sirius offered a small smile as he stood. "Will you wake me… when I scream?"

"Before if I can manage it." Remus offered the same insincere attempt at normalcy. "Is there anything else I can do to make it better?"

"No. Just remember, you always pull out of a dive in a fake. Don't forget to pull up, because I am a sucky snitch. Got me?"

"Nope, not a word of it mate. Go to bed." 

"Good night Moony."

"Good Night Padfoot."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

_"Speak your doubt because I can smell it on you! Speak it and have it out so I don't have to live with your silent doubt any longer!" Remus half shouted, slamming his teacup on its saucer and sloshing the amber liquid all over. _

_"Do not claim innocents in this Remus! I am not the only one who doubts!" Sirius shouted back whirling from the sink._

_"Yes! Yes, all right! Fine! I do worry that you are the turncoat. I worry because I do not _want_ to believe it. It might be true, but Merlin, I pray against it… you…. You revel in my possible fall from grace!" Remus had stood now as well, knocking his chair back as he did so. _

_"What the hell! What is wrong with you?! You are always so sure the world is against you, that I am against you. So sure we all hate you because you are a werewolf, so sure that is why we cast blame your way. Did you ever think that any grudges or anger or mistrust might be harbored against Remus the _person_ not Remus the werewolf? It's just a fucking scapegoat for you Remmy, an excuse to pin your failures and negative aspects on. Like if you weren't a wolf you would be some pure saint!" Sirius felt anger bubbling in him, like water gone to boil. He was glad both their wands were on the nightstand in the bedroom, because he had no doubt Remus was feeling the same. _

_"So you are saying that your thoughts of my betrayal are based on the fact that I am not a good person, as opposed to mistrusting my control over the wolf?" Remus's voice was deadly quiet, and Sirius knew it was the moment of calm before tempest. He could ease the situation… or push it. Some part of him deep inside resented too much to let this go. He pushed._

_"I am saying that you are sniveling, insecure, afraid, and refuse to accept responsibility for your own actions. Tell me when I get to something that isn't a trait Voldemort seeks out." Sirius growled. A teacup flew across the room and shattered a couple feet from his head; he knew Remus had chosen to miss. _

_"Oh yeah? What about your stupid 'devil may care' attitude, what about the way you tortured Snape day in and day out? The utter cruelty you showed him? Hmm? What about your _family?_ Apple doesn't fall far from the tree does it? You are just like them, you know that Sirius? _Just like them._ I am not the only one with a dark side." _

_There was an eternal pause as they both panted and raged. Sirius wanted to kill him…or at least do some serious bodily harm. That was a low blow… using insecurities shared as they lay together after making love._

_His wand was suddenly in his hand and it tingled with power, snapping and jumping in his hand. There was no need for thought. He pointed the wand at Remus and shouted, screamed, not just with his voice, but with his heart. "_Avada Kedavra_"_

_There was a moment of utter and total shock on Remus's face, he didn't need to speak for Sirius to hear him._

_"But Sirius… I love you…" and then he was a lifeless heap on the floor of their home. Sirius's chest heaved as he crossed the kitchen slowly, kneeling down. Maybe he had missed, maybe he had missed, maybe he had… he rolled Remus's body over. His eyes were wide and staring, his body already starting to go cold. What had he done?_

_"Remus… Remmy, baby, come on… its okay…wake up…Remmy…. Moony…."_

"Moony…no…. no…" Sirius was weeping outright, his whole body shaking with his sobs. Remus soothed back his hair, leaning in close, whispering against his once-lovers ear.

"Shhh, shhh Padfoot, it is only a dream, I am here, shhh." Remus took one of Sirius's clawed hands, trying to sooth it, trying to sooth him, knowing from experience that actively trying to shake him awake made things much worse, that was when Sirius woke up, still in the dream. "Its alright lover, shhh."

Sirius tensed suddenly, waking in the dark, his heart beating so hard it hurt. He felt hot wet tears on his face, and cramped at the back of his throat. He had killed him… killed his lover, his Remus…

"Shhh, shhh, its alright, it was just a dream." A soft, near angelic to the state of Sirius's mind, voice against his ear, warm breath gliding over his neck, a hand warm and calloused, holding his. 

'Remmy? Oh god…Remmy." Sirius gasped turning to him and yanking him down on the bed, crushing the slightly startled werewolf to his chest, clutching him. "Oh god, oh god." He whispered again and again, still weeping quietly against ginger hair.

"Sirius? What is it? You are safe now. It's okay… I'm right here." Remmy's voice was bewildered as he allowed Sirius to clutch at him so, resting his head on the narrow heaving chest. 

"No… I dreamed… in my dream… I… we… it was that last fight we had… the night that James and Lilly were killed… but… instead of fighting… and breaking all those dishes… I… I had my wand… and I killed you…. And I wanted to… when I did it. I just… and you…." Sirius's voice died off again as he barely kept back a sob.

"I'm right here Sirius, I'm right here. And so are you. That is all behind us now. Its alright, it was just a dream." Remus's voice was gentle, even a little condescending as he reach up to stroke Sirius's hair.

"Light the lamp!" Sirius insisted suddenly scrambling to sit up. He suddenly knew, _knew,_ that this was either a fevered, insane dream and he was still in Azkaban, and the moment he could see, he would see his cell. Or that Remus really had died, and the man lying against him was an animate corpse, that his flesh would be rotted away, and his eyes would be gone… He scrambled and fumbled frantically, trying to find a match to light the oil lamp by his bed.

"Sirius, Christ, relax, its okay!" Remus called as he pulled his wand from his pocket. "_Luminos_." The wand lit like a glow stick suddenly, cascading them both in an odd, but familiar light. 

It was just Remus. His handsome, gentle, kind, Remus; sitting on the bed holding his wand, looking at him like he had gone totally mad. Sirius reached out, his bare arms looking skeletal, but he waited this time for Remus to accept, before crushing him again. After a moment Remus scooted closer, into his arms, drawing Sirius against him, against his chest. Sirius rested his head there, still panting, his tears starting to ease.

"I'm sorry… I'm sorry I am so nuters. I don't mean to be." Sirius whispered clutching at the worn fabric of Remus's shirt.

"Its okay, you were in Azkaban for twelve years… its understandable and it will pass. It will. I promise." Remus whispered, rocking him a little, as the fingers of one hand carded through long black hair. 'Because you know what, I love you Sirius, and I'm going to help you through this, just because we are no longer lovers, doesn't mean we aren't friends."

"Thank you Remus… thank you for everything, always." 

"No thanks necessary. You would do the same for me." 

And Sirius prayed to whatever deities were listening that it was true, that if his devotion to Remus were put to the test, he could pass, because he had already failed the test of his love. 

Authors Note: Sorry if this chapter was a little dry, I really need a beta to bounce ideas off of for this, anyone open for the job? Please? I pay in cookies…


	6. Not Enough

Disclaimer: Don't own them, if I did I wouldn't be a poor college student Starfall, Moonset 

Chapter Six:

Not Enough

By: Irish

Sirius was spending the day the way he always spent his day, lounging inside on the couch that was still doubling as Remus's bed, reading a book. He was getting bloody sick of reading, but Remus didn't have a whole lot of other options for entertainment. The muggle radio had fascinated him for several days… but it didn't talk back when he asked it questions, so now his days were spent following a patch of sun about the living room. Sometimes he popped into Padfoot to better enjoy the sun or to slip outside and get a little exercise, but even swimming in the pond was getting old, then again, it wasn't Azkaban, how bad could it be?

Today had been just like any other in this last week. Remus left before dawn to help a neighboring farmer take in his crops. It was harvesting season, and for once Remus had no problem finding muggle work, and muggle work paid the bills just as well as Wizarding jobs. Sirius had wakened much later and had fed the hippogriff, and mucked out its stall, promising a romp later that evening, then had taken a bath. After dressing in clothes three sizes too big and a decade out of style he ate the muffins and fruit Remus had lain out for his breakfast with a note detailing what farm he would be at, from what time until what time, any errands he had to run, and what time he would be home. Some times there were instructions on what leftovers he was to reheat for lunch and how he was to do it, or something he was to start for dinner. Sirius really didn't mind the detailed instructions; he knew it was Remus's way of showing affection, having all the details taken care of so Sirius didn't have to worry. 

He wasn't expecting Remus home until after dark, in fact there had been a gentle request for Sirius to cook dinner, if he didn't mind terribly, in a postscript to today's note. Sirius had settled in for another long boring day, and a tense awkward evening, the routine that the two of them had so easily fallen into, dancing around the shards of their former lives. 

He had started to doze off over the book, his head drooping, and his silhouette in relief on the floor when the door flew open with a bang.  

"Bloody Hell Remus!"

"Sirius!" Remus stood in the doorway of the cottage, hands braced on either side, chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath; he had obviously run some distance. "Sirius, dementors!" 

Sirius froze, just plain froze, to the spot, fear rooting him. Remus bent double trying to catch his breath yet, and Sirius wondered vaguely how far the man had run. 

"Wh-what do we do?" His brain was stuck in neutral.

"Shift…. to Padfoot…. I have… a place…." Remus wheezed striding to the couch and grabbing Sirius by the arm hauling him to the magic door. "Stable!" Remus threw open the door to the hippogriffs paddock. The animal jumped and skittered, rearing up.

"Buckbeak, behave, please, not now!" Sirius pleaded as Remus shoved the animal aside with out a thought, not noticing how close he came to loosing a limb, throwing open a hidden door in the floor. 

"Take Buckbeak down, and change into Padfoot, hurry, they are coming!" Remus was literally shoving both of them into the dark hole. Both Sirius and Buckbeak balked, but Remus didn't let that stop him, a hand on Buckbeak's rump and one on Sirius back, shoving them relentlessly into the dark. Finally Sirius gathered some part of his mind and guided the hippogriff down the few short stairs into the cellar type area, before he shifted into Padfoot and crouched down, listening as Remus threw straw over the door and left the room. 

Padfoot had almost no sense of time. All he knew that it was dark and he was scared, and that the hippogriff next to him was prancing and whining. He was waiting for the nice man, for Moony, to come release him from the prison like cellar. He couldn't help but whimper himself.

"I am not hiding Black. You have no documentation to search my private residence. I am asking you to leave at once." Remus said firmly to the three black robed figures in his living room, his wand in hand. One of the dementors raised a hand slowly, holding open a piece of parchment to ministry werewolf legislation 1283, section Q: All werewolves are subject to be searched at any time. Another piece of garbage that made him less than human. "Fine then, search away." Remus stepped back trying to look angry, while he trembled inside. 

It took them fifteen minutes to search the main room, his bedroom, figure out it was a magic door, and search every room but the stable. When they opened the door on the stable, Remus's breath caught. Gods, let Sirius be silent and conscious, if he reacted too strongly to the dementors, and passed out… he would turn to human form, and then it would be all over. 

"See, no Black, now kindly leave. There is nothing left to search." 

Below his feet Padfoot trembled, trying desperately hard not to whine. Moony stood over him now, Moony would protect him. The nice gentle man wouldn't let him be hurt. Padfoot trembled, tail between his legs as his body started to go numb. They were there right over him…. he needed to stay conscious, needed to stay as Padfoot, so the bad things wouldn't find him…

When Remus was finally able to rush down to the cellar, he almost got killed by Buckbeak, who he pushed aside roughly, kneeling by the large prone form of Padfoot. His furry body jerked and trembled gray eyes rolled back in his head, half convulsing.

"Shite…." Remus muttered seeing the condition his friend was in. Sirius had done the best he could, but he was in a bad way. How had he lived through twelve years of this? Remus knelt and scooped the trembling dog into his arms, gripping his fur, as a comfort to himself as he carried the dog up to their bedroom, laying him on the bed, still twitching violently and whimpering.

"Shhh, Padfoot, they are gone now, come on." Remus whispered sitting on the bed beside the dog, stroking his thin fur with long slow strokes, trying to sooth the dog, relax him. His poor Padfoot. Both hands moved in long stroking motions down the canine's side, firm caressing touches that would, under other circumstances, have had Padfoot whining for more. They did manage to calm him some as Remus's strong hands continued to sooth over him. Remus sighed softly, when would this hell be over?

"I'm okay." Sirius voice crunched like wheels on gravel. The fur under Remus's caressing hand had turned to threadbare ware of the fabric of his robe. Remus's started so hard he almost leapt off the mattress, his own heart not yet calmed.

"Si, Gods! You scared me." Remus chuckled, but it was a near hysterical sound, his heart in his throat, pitching his voice higher.

"Sorry mate." Sirius mumbled through teeth that chattered violently, as if cold. Remus knew though that it was fear. 

"Easy there Sirius, easy, they are gone now. Try and calm yourself." He scooted next to him again, stroking sable black locks from a clammy brow. "Let me get you some hot chocolate, you are quivering all over." Remus's voice was like water over smooth rock calm and cool, his feeling hands that searched lightly over Sirius's body for injury, fever or clamminess, were light and warm. 

"No!" It came out a frantic gasp like a man breaching the surface of the water that would drown him, and taking his first breath. Sirius swallowed and tried again. "No… you are better for me then chocolate… you don't have any handy?" Sirius knew his memories were dodgy at best, but unless Remus had changed very drastically, he always kept a bar or three of chocolate in his night table.

"Yes… suck on it though, I don't trust you to swallow right now." Remus sighed reaching over and across Sirius prone form, still turned on his side, for a half eaten bar on the bedside table. He broke off a piece and held it to Sirius's lips, feeding it to him with competent fingers.

"Mother Hen much?" Sirius grumbled as he took the rectangular morsel, leaving it to melt in his mouth as instructed. "I'm just a bit shaken, I'm not bloody dying." Bad choice of words, and Sirius shuddered harder, he wasn't dead, but he could have been.

"All right." Remus shrugged setting the candy bar in Sirius's reach, sitting back and away from him a bit, letting him be 'independent'. The wizard reached for the bar with a hand that shook so bad it looked palsied, he fingered the bar weakly, unable to get a grip, or strength to break off the corner, he picked it up and dropped it several times before admitting defeat and leaving it lay.

"Fuck you for always being right Moony. Do you ever get tired of it?"

"Regularly. Its not like I glory in seeing you like this?" Remus's hand closed around Sirius's that twitched on the quilt like a live thing, and tucked it against Sirius's chest, fingers lingering to feel his pulse, which beat hard and fast against the thin, pale flesh. "Your heart is racing… Sirius…" Remus's tone had gone from mild, and detached professionalism, to serious concern. "Were you like this the entire time you were in Azkaban?"

"No… just since… since Buckbeak and I escaped, when Harry saved me… I… Merlin, its like this uncontrollable phobia… Moony, what the hell is wrong with me?" Sirius tensed trying to still the shivers that were still wracking him, and clench his jaw against trembling teeth.

"Nothing unexpected… just… well I suppose it's a panic attack of sorts." Remus offered him another bite of chocolate, which Sirius accepted with out protest. "I mean, generally panic attacks are defined as an uncontrollable, unreasonable attack of anxiety, leading to physical symptoms, because of an excessive amount of adrenalin. Though you have a very logical and proportional level of fear, but, same idea I think." 

Like his description of autoerotic asphyxiation, the clinical definition of his circumstance eased Sirius somewhat; the known was somehow less frightening. Remus's encyclopedic knowledge pulling his arse from the fire once again. How many times had he and James relied on that knowledge and accepted it with out question?  

"Right… thanks…" Sirius closed his eyes, trying to relax, the chocolate helping to some degree, as did the words for his current condition, easing him enough that his teeth stopped chattering and he was able to breath again. He felt Remus stroke back his hair, smoothing it with a heavy hand, slicking it back and away from his face, adjusting the pillow under his head so he was in a more natural position. Remus his caretaker. Really, Remus had been caretaker to all of them; they were only able to repay the favor once a month. Sirius sighed and concentrated on even breaths, and the warmth spreading from his mouth to the rest of his body from the spread of the chocolate through out his system. He would live through this, all of this. Someday his name would be cleared, and he and Harry would have a cottage in Hogsmead, and he would be an Auror again, and life would be like it should be… mostly. Someday, the Marauders would get back up with out being kicked down. 

Remus watched as his tentative friend, once lover, found a calm even breath and stuck to it, his heart rate slowing. Taking his pulse had really just been a formality, with the moon waxing again; he could hear the man's thundering heartbeat like the gallop of hooves. Remus's own hands were trembling slightly, a panic of his own, an anger of his own, surging like the wolf inside him and howling for release. But holding on was all Remus had ever known, and so he held on, gripping the same downhill slope he had dug his nails into the day he heard the Potter's were dead, Sirius was in Azkaban, and he was being 'released from his duty to the ministry' as an Auror. 

He remembered being a child, in his tiny bed in the tiny cabin at the edge of the sea on the edge of Ireland. He remembered the way she would hold him when he would wake in the night, screaming and thrashing in the throws of his own panic attacks, how she would hold him and sing softly, her strong hands smoothing down his arms and legs and chest in heavy petting strokes. He remembered the pressure of those caresses, how they had forced his muscles to relax, how the weight of the touch had reassured him. It was a sort of massage, he supposed. Molly Lupin had said she had done it to him to sooth him as a baby, as her mother had done for her and all her siblings. 

He started at Sirius's shoulder, petting him the same way he had when the wizard had been Padfoot, long heavy strokes, allowing him to feel every knot of tensed muscle, the knobbiness of his elbow, the scant flesh over his ribs. Far too weighty a touch for a lover's caress, and Remus thought he might have hit on something here. It wasn't too intimate, just soothing, relaxing, as was evidence by Sirius's soft, Padfoot like chuff of contentment. Yes, this was working. 

He took Sirius's bony arm between both hands and smoothed down along his arm, pressing firmly, popping the joints a little, which another sigh from Sirius, indicated he found pleasurable. The werewolf kept up the massaging caress on the arm until it was limp and lax, the trembling stopped by lack of muscle tone. 

"What are you doing Remus?" 

"Something my mother did to me. Call it the ancient art of half arsed Irish massage." Remus replied, not leaving room for Padfoot to be clever as he started in on a bony side.

"It feels damn good. Thank you." 

Remus smiled slightly, "You are welcome Padfoot, as always." 

The slow heavy strokes were wonderful, rubbing away Sirius's anxiety and fear, making him sleepy with the sudden loss of adrenalin. Feeling Remus manipulate his limbs, bending them, soothing the muscles, relaxing them, turning Sirius into a string-cut marionette to his pack-mates capable hands. He couldn't help but giggle slightly, when he felt Remus's hands cradling his head, rolling it gently, using the joint with out using any of Sirius muscles. It tickled oddly and immediately relieved the headache that had been starting to form in the absents of adrenalin, whatever Remmy was doing was definitely releasing some very calming endorphins. 

"There, how do you feel now? Because it feel's like you're asleep to me." Remus's hands were now running twisting Sirius's hips gently, causing things to crackle in his back, like bursting bubbles of pain that suddenly eased a tension and compression he didn't even know he was feeling. He marveled a moment at Moony's strength to manipulate the dead weight of his body like that. Then again this was a man nearing forty who could still pick himself up off the ground after a full moon and tend his own injuries. 

"Feels better then a-" He had been about to say 'tight whore' but thought his Moony might be a bit offended at that. "A cheering charm. Your mother taught you that?"

"Well the rubbing, like this…" He demonstrated again on Sirius's arm. "Apparently its used on infants mostly, but she was still doing it to me when was home for the summer before our seventh year, so… but the rest of that, I worked, for a short time with special needs wizarding children, we did a lot of that as physical therapy." 

"Oh wonderful so you treated me like a retarded baby."

"And I am the cynical bastard? I think you need more chocolate." Remus sighed forcing a piece between Sirius's lips before the man could object, or speak at all for that matter. He moved to the edge of the bed, and stood smoothing out his muggle jeans, which he was starting to notice smelled like a barnyard, and the t-shirt that smelled rather strongly of sweat.  "You nap. I have a field to finish harvesting."

"Wait, Rem…" Sirius rolled his head towards Remus, cracking an eye. "Are things really so bad, that you have to be a field hand for muggles?"

"Would I be doing it if they weren't? Listen my picture was all over the Prophet… I have been outed, in every possible meaning of the word. And if the Ministry was aware I was working at all, I would probably be shipped off to a werewolf retaining camp faster then you can say Quiditch. Or would have a fall down the stairs and land on a silver bullet, if you catch my drift.  I do everything I can to make a living, short of whoring, and don't think there hasn't been times when that's been starting to look like a pretty good option." Remus sighed heavily running his hands through his silver streaked hair. 

"Remus… I'm sorry for what has happened, all of it…." Sirius looked up at his friend with a soft sigh, steel and blue eyes full remorse for what could have been, and what had fallen by the wayside, dreams that were lost to reality.

"Si… don't be, this is none of your fault. There is only one… no make that two, living men that can be blamed for this… Tom Riddle and Peter Pettigrew. And everything else is our own poor choices and the substance of reality. You and I…  we have been giving a second chance, we are the tattered remnants of the Marauders… and I plan to… well hell I don't know what. I've been kicked down, but I am not staying there. Neither should you. For good or ill, our fates are twined. I will see you this evening Sirius." 

Sirius lay back, closing his eyes again. What had happened to their lives? Remus had once talked of woven fate… that the four Marauders were fate brothers. He had called it many things, relating it to many books, calling them The Fellowship, after the Lord or the Rings, a set of books by some muggle, but the books were popular even in the wizarding world, or Ka-tet, after some nutter American who was known for his horror. Ka-tet apparently meant Fate Mates or something along those lines. What happened when the fellowship was broken to betrayal. Only their Brodimir had not died in honor, he had not died at all. No, their betrayer, their Judas, was sitting at the right hand of… well… Sirius had run out of extended literary metaphors, but Judas, Bordimir, they were both one thing, the worst thing, oath breakers. And the lowest rings of hell were reserved for oath breakers and mutineers. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The thunder rolled. It was the wet season in England, if there could be said to be such. It was predawn and postnight, the light hovering in limbo, waiting for a cue that would never come on an over cast day like this. Remus had seen the sun down, and would see it rise again this morning. The moon was growing pregnant in the sky, clouds or no, Remus knew that by the ache in his bones that was more then just the rheumatism that was setting in. He was not restless, but sleep was still a fickle lover. He lay on the couch, as he had for the last month, wearing only a pair of jeans gone so soft they might as well have been pajamas. He felt too vulnerable these days to let Sirius catch him any less dressed then that. 

The curtains were tied back, showing him the sky and countryside and the lightening that danced closer. Dawn would turn dark today, and with any luck lighten around noon. But neither he nor his Sirius had any luck, so it would pour the day long. Sirius had been quiet in the night, giving Remus no distraction from an endless parade of memories. Moments of utter humiliation, embarrassment and pain. Like when he had transformed in front of Harry, what he must have looked like… thank the Stars that he had yet to speak to the boy. He wasn't sure he could look him, or any of the others, in the eye again. 

Hermione wrote him weekly. It surprised him at first, but after a thought, he realized that he shouldn't have been. It took him four weeks to respond, finally spurred into action when on the fourth week; no owl had brought him a letter from her. So he had written back, and kept to pleasantries, which took two hours to find and expand into a respectable length letter. Today a school owl would arrive from her, and he would read it, and smile that anyone thought of him fondly yet. And then he would agonize over what to tell her for two days, and finally send an owl back. 

As if summoned, a bored looking screech owl rapped on his window, blinking at him, demanding breakfast with his body language. Remus went over to the window and lifted it, letting the raptor in, taking the letter from it carefully.

"I'm sorry, I don't have much to give you, will you take stale bread I had planned for the ducks? Oh don't look at me like that, they feed you at the school, I know they do." Remus found a full slice of the least stale bread he had set aside for the ducks, and gave it to the owl. "My thanks, truly, fly safe, storms coming." Remus sighed as the owl rolled his large eyes before taking off with his sub par tip. 

"Ruddy owl." He muttered scratching his chest as he waved he filled his favorite mug with water and a tea bag, waving his wand over it in a circular flick to heat the water. It wasn't exactly high class, but this wasn't exactly the Queen's Palace, either. Stowing his wand and picking up the mug he padded out onto his porch, feeling the oncoming storm like a wet blanket on his shoulders. His hair, though too straight to frizz, started to stand on end. He didn't bother to adjust it, who was he trying to impress? 

Leaning back against his little cottage, he hooked a thumb in the waist band of his jeans, sipping at his tea, liking the feel of the worn wood against his feet, which were starting to look a bit hobbitish as the full moon neared. The hair on his chest also felt thicker, not that that took much. Setting his tea on the porch rail he unfolded the letter, written on a plain parchment, in a neat, functional handwriting, no frills, no decorations, just words. It made Remus smile in a slow way. Hermione was so… unique, and had so obviously not fully hit puberty. 

The letter was simple and sincere, if incredibly thorough, as though she was reporting to a teacher on sabbatical. He wondered if she harbored some hope that that was the case. It wasn't, he would never teach again, as much as he had loved it. He wouldn't let himself, even if the ministry would. She asked him several questions, and answered the handful he had asked her himself in his last letter. He was a bit more startled when he got to the end of the letter, where after signing off there was a very lengthy postscript, not directly asking if she could come to visit, but hedging around it. Yes, Hermione was very Unique.

He folded the parchment and envelope in half and stuck it in the back pocket of his jeans, the paper sharing a pocket with his wand. The rail for the weather stained porch was wide, and he hopped up onto it with the grace of a younger man, neither spilling his tea, nor blasting off his buttocks as Moody had oft predicted in his Auror days. He reclined back against a wooden post, his legs stretched before him and crossed at the ankle as thunder peeled overhead. He could smell the rain, and figured he had fifteen minutes before the clouds broke; maybe a half hour before the storm took hold. 

_It wasn't a window seat, per say, but it was a recessed window big enough for Remus so sit on, his hips narrow enough to fit on the ledge, as long as he crossed his legs at the ankles for balance. The window was open, the pane thrown wide, and the smell of rain and soil and wet wood greeted his nose, wet animals too. He liked the rain, or the snow, the wind, anything. Anything of nature that could turn from beautiful to murderous in an unseen moment. The difference between a wolf and a werewolf. He heard James's steps, though James thought he was being stealthy, and he lowered one leg to the ground. As expected, Jamie ran forward to play-shove him out the window. Remus didn't even blink._

_"Good Quiddich, mate?"_

_"I can never scare you. Peter would have screamed like a girl." James pouted. Sirius would have screamed like a girl too, Remus knew. Sirius's voice was taking a particular long time to finish changing and even at seventeen, he squeaked like a clarinet, and screamed like a girl._

_"Better luck next time." He clapped James on a sweaty shoulder. "Date with Lily?"_

_James nodded, pushing his glasses up on his nose. "I'm taking her in to Hogsmead, I've got a reservation at the Pegasus." He grinned wickedly, and Remus didn't bother to ask: A. how they were sneaking out to go on a date, and B. How he had managed to reservations at the posh-est restaurant in town._

_"Better wash up then." Remus smiled, but it was a small smile, his Mona Lisa smile. He hoped Prongs would take the hint and bugger off. The moon tonight would be so close to full, that it would look that way. He wasn't exactly dangerous at this time, but he was certainly cranky. _

_"Oy, good plan. Careful sitting there though Remus, for s-e-r-i -o-u-s." It was an inside joke, an attempt to draw out more then that Mona Lisa quirk, to draw a rare, genuine grin. But Remus could not supply it, and made it up by clapping James on the shoulder again._

_"Have fun tonight." He said, before turning back to look out the open window. Prongs said something else, some salutation, but it was lost to Remus as he watched the deep green grass of Hogwarts in spring. _

 If had known then what he knew now, he thought that he would have heard those words that James had said, that casual salutation. Because he wanted every word, every moment of James, and Lily, and that life. He wanted every detail, every sense of it, because those moments were all he had left. Sirius was back, out of Azkaban, and pardoned, at least to those who knew him, but Remus was the last of their fellowship, the last of their Ka-tet. The last of their kind. And he held their secrets, their treasures, the boyhood (and in Lily's case, girlhood) of the five of them safe, held it secret. 

Another sip found his tea cold, and his arm wet, as the rain had started, gone unnoticed by the Traveler. Time slipped through his fingers and his mind like water, in a way that he barely noticed sometimes. His hand settled back in its original place, the rain drops running over the flesh of his arm, making it prick, and wetting down the moon-thickened hair there, over the back of his palm, and into his teacup. 


	7. Some Way Back

Starfall, Moonset

Chapter Seven:

Some Way Back

By: Irish

Sirius watched him, watched him fade from this world, watched him almost disappear from reality, so lost was Remus in his own head. A daydreamer, or so McGonagall had said, but it wasn't cheerful fantasy or pleasant reverie that he slipped into so deeply that he almost ceased to exist. It wasn't daydreams… it was more like Remus crawled inside his own head and hid for a while.

He had been prone to this even before the deaths of the Potters, but then, in those days, when he crawled into his head, most often that small Mona Lisa smile would come to his lips, and Sirius knew that whatever insulation he had found there brought him cheer. But over this month, and maybe over the last thirteen years, when he sidestepped into his mind, he projected a deep melancholy. He was a survivor, _The_ Survivor, really. He carried not only the world, but Atlas as well.

"Remus?"

Remus turned to him slowly, blinking as if just waking. "Sirius, what are you doing up?"

"Uh, watching you get soaked, it would seem." Sirius replied, moving over to where Remus was carefully arranged, putting his hands on Remus's hips and half lifting him off the rail onto the solid ground. "Your arm and shoulder are all wet." Sirius tried to remember he had last done something like that. He had many memories similar, lifting Remus carefully down off of some perch, the window in their room at Hogwarts, the tree in front yard of the pleasant little brownstone they had shared with Lily and James…yes… that was the last time. Just before the Potters' had died.

_"Remi, love, what are you doing up there?" Sirius's tone was exasperated, yet indulgent, as he looked up at where his lover sat, leaning back against the trunk of a tree, legs stretched out along the branch, crossed at the ankles, a book in his lap._

_"Reading." He replied in a nonchalant way, apparently werewolves reading in trees were normal occurrences for him. Then again; he was a werewolf reading in a tree._

_"Lily says dinner is ready, and that if you don't get your nose out of that book, she's going to transfigure it into a newt."_

_Remus looked up, his lips an even line, but his eyes dancing. "My nose, or the book?"_

_"Well you know love, she didn't really specify, but do you really want to find out?"_

_"I suppose not." Remus sighed with a faux world-weariness, closing his book. Sirius stepped closer and reached up, Remus really wasn't very high off the ground, and grasped his hips. Remus slid off the branch of his own volition, but readily trusted Sirius's hands to guide him to the ground. He landed easily on his feet, and in Sirius's arms…._

Remus watched as Sirius's brow wrinkled, and his eyes lost focus, then watching as a moment later they slipped back into focus.

"The last time I touched you like that, lifted you down, was at our house, the brownstone, that little willow in the front. You had been reading." Sirius said, his voice slightly dreamy with the remembrance.

"I made a bad joke about an indefinite reference, and then we made out." Remus smiled slightly. "Yes, that was the last time."

Sirius let his eyes scan Remus's face. "Remi…" He cupped Remus's face in both his hands. "Remi, you look…"

"Old." Remus supplied.

"Like… like you carry the burdens of all of us." Sirius really saw Remus for the first time since he had arrived. A flash of lightening etched and highlighted the creases in his face, around his mouth, between his eyebrows, at the corners of his eyes. In the dim light his hair looked completely gray, not the tawny-going-gray that he really was. And his eyes… Merlin… his eyes… Sirius thought, in that moment, they may look more haunted then his own. Remus shrugged slightly.

"That's because I do, or did. You have part of that now."

"Remus," Sirius's thumbs caressed his cheeks. "I-- I remember so little, so few of the good things we had. I don't remember the love, only the betrayal… and suspicion, mostly on my part. I want to remember. I want…"

"We are broken men with broken lives." Remus's voice was soft and hollow, and Sirius hated it, but it was truth.

"So, can't we cobble a life together out of what's left? We both have nothing, at least maybe with each other, we would have something, some reason to just keep… being. Help me remember."

Remus's eyes closed under the caress of Sirius's hands, if he tilted his head back, just a little, they would support the weight of his head, and maybe ease the knot of tension that had resided at the base of his skull for a decade. "It's raining." Remus observed, as though he wasn't standing their, wet from the waist up on one side. "We can't work the fields until it clears."

"It won't clear today." Sirius said, his breath starting to catch in his chest, he felt Remus shift his head, slightly, and felt the full weight of it in his palms. "Headache?"

"Only for the last few years."

"Come inside with me?"

"Okay."

And like that, some agreement had been reached, some line tossed out by one, and caught by the other. Sirius gently set Remus's head straight, and let go. Instead he took both of Remus's hands in his own and brought them too his lips, kissing his knuckles softly, before walking backwards slowly, leading Remus into the cabin.

They said nothing at first, as they moved into Remus's bedroom, their hands loosely clasped. Remus lay down on his back, and for a while, Sirius just sat, cradling his head in his hands, lifting and straightening in such away that he knew would relieve the tension in Remus's skull. He remembered, vaguely, like light through a dirty window, sitting like this other times, at Hogwarts, at the Auror Academy, at their small apartment over Flourish and Blots, and the house they had shared with the Potters, just sitting like this, trying to relieve one of Remi's tension headaches, that sometimes became migraines.

It was only now that they were beginning to talk, now that they both lay on their sides, knee's pulled up a little, looking like mirror image twins, brother light, brother dark. Remus had slipped his hand into Sirius's where it lay on the quilt, and Sirius had taken it loosely. There was plenty of space between their bodies, not even their knees touched, just their hands. The curtains were open, but the glass nearly opaque with water, the room had a gray-green tinge to it from the storm outside.

"When, when they took me away, I knew, I knew I was going to Azkaban. I was laughing because… because otherwise I would have been screaming, and as James always said-"

"Never let them see you leak." Remus finished. They were watching each other with a quiet attentiveness, their eyes meeting and dancing away, meeting and dancing away.

"Right. Peter-- I couldn't believe Peter had been so clever, so devious. Had we always underestimated him? I don't know. I didn't even try and defend myself, what was the point, I mean; no one would believe me, and all they had was my word to it. I pleaded innocent, and was, of course shot down faster then a one winged Pegasus. I… Remus… I wanted to see you… so badly, to explain, I thought, maybe, if I was able to talk to you, before anyone else, that maybe you would believe me."

"I would have hunted Peter with you. Why didn't you take me with you." Remus whispered the question that had been so plaguing him since he had learned of Sirius's innocents.

"No reason, no real one anyway. Anger, poor judgment, stupidity, a desire to protect you. Nothing worth a bowl of beans. So anyway… they locked me up and threw away the key. This part, it gets a little harder." Sirius sighed, his gray eyes meeting Remus's hazel ones. Remus reached out with his other hand, and touched Sirius's face.

"Then let me tell it first." Remus's voice was soft, the same rolling whisper that they had been both been speaking in since they had lain down, but Sirius thought he could here the deeply buried Belfast turn to his words.

"Do… you know it?" Sirius murmured back, his eyes drifting away again.

"I know the general idea. I'll tell it. Then you'll tell all of it." Remus waited, watching Sirius's dark head, waiting until he saw it nod. Remus shifted a little closed, their knees brushing lightly. "You were alone… you were cold." Remus paused closing his own eyes. He knew the story, more then he wanted to, and yet there was more to know. He knew, part by simple logic, part by hearing what Sirius screamed in his dreams and part-- part because a small part of him had been there too. "You cried at first, you cried a lot, and screamed. Then lost hope, slowly as each day passed like dust through your fingers. They waited to start the worst of it, because if you still had hope you might fight it, cause trouble." Remus paused and swallowed. Sirius's form was hunching over more, drawing in to itself. Remus took a moment to shift position, so Sirius's head rested in the curve of his body and they would have made a T if they straightened out. He

used his fingertips to smooth back sable locks.

"When the Dementors really started to effect you, when not only was your joy gone, but the goodness and happiness that you had had… we had had… was evaporating, leaving you with the worst of it all. Then they let in the death eaters, the ones who tattled, the ones who they wanted to reward, and." Remus paused here, very conscious of his wording, how should he phrase it?

"They…" Sirius cleared he throat. "They used me-- hurt me--" Sirius couldn't bring himself to say the word, to own what had happened to him.

"They raped you." Always Remus, always clinical.

"Yes." It was horse like wind over sand. Sirius cleared his throat again. "They raped me… for…years… most of my time there. I don't know how long or how often. Long enough between to let me heal." Sirius felt the first tears start to fall. He wasn't crying really, just leaking, like blood from a wound. "Sometimes it was the dementors themselves." Remus had begun the tail, but Sirius knew he was the only one who could finish it. "They were worse. I don't think… they have the equipment to do it the normal way." A bitter bark of laughter. "If there is such a thing. I never was physically wounded, I never bled after them, never got sick with fever, but I felt them, like being fucked with and icicle."

Sirius took a deep breath; trying to keep this on an intellectual level, negate it by giving it words. "The Kiss… its this abyss that can take from you, suck you dry, and leave you with nothing, while empowering itself. When they... it was the opposite of that, but just as bad. It was like they took all that… evilness and emptiness and turned it into something, made it phallic and made me their fuck. I have no idea if they got any pleasure on it… or just fed on what it made me feel."

Sirius took a deep breath. The words were coming, fountaining from inside him, and he wasn't sure he could stop them, but gods it hurt. He didn't want to do this, but he needed too. It was like and emotional artery had been severed.

"Remus, this fucking sucks."

"I know. Its okay… just say what you need to." Remus's fingers slid through the long, thin hair of the man he was curled around, letting the slight natural curl of it wrap around his fingers, and slide free, not offering more comfort then Sirius wanted, nor denying it to him.

"I don't even remember parts of it. I think there were times that I lost it completely. I think there are years that are missing, just…gone. That's okay. Disconcerting, but okay. I managed to keep my sanity. You know this part too, because I _was_ innocent. That was truth. And it wasn't pretty. I'm sure there is more I can tell you but its just…individual incidents, not the story itself. It's like splinters, there is always still something left, even after the worst is gone. I got out, you know that too-- and the rest-- and now…" Sirius trailed off as he felt the first sob start to tighten his chest. "And now…" He couldn't finish; the pain had formed a tight knot and lodged itself in his throat. He shook his head.

"And now, for the first time in thirteen years, your not just trying to stay alive. And for the first time in thirteen years you have to confront the deaths of Lily and James, the idea that you have been tortured for thirteen years, for a crime you didn't commit, and deal with the torture itself. And you don't know how. And I haven't been any help."

Sirius nodded, then shook his head, then turned his face against the quilt, a hand fumbling up for Remus's as wail, half howl, loosed from his chest, and the tears started to flow in earnest. Remus took his hand and folded it in his own, brought the frail thing to his lips, and held it there lightly, as he caressed Sirius's head, murmuring softly, sounds and words that had no meaning, just emotion.

Sirius didn't want to be held, because there was no comfort, none, that could even touch this. It was like the few times he had been seriously injured as a child. Someone could hold your hand, and help give you the strength to make it through, but they couldn't stop the pain, couldn't ease it. You could only suffer on your own, and try and stay grounded. He could feel the hot wetness that trickled over the hand that was held to Remus's face, felt that he too was crying. Remus, he recalled, again in that vague half absent way, had always been empathetic like that. If someone cried, Remus cried with them. Or was so often the case, when Sirius could not cry himself, Remus cried for him.

The tears fell like the rain for a time, hard and drenching. But as a calm came to the storm, so too it fell over Sirius. His sobs, which had been mostly silent, but violent, trailed into ragged panting and sniffling. The quilt under his head was soaked in an area the size of a tea saucer, and his shirt stuck to him with sweat. Over him and around him was Remus, who despite his own tears, had not made any indication of crying, and held his same position, curled around Sirius's head, one hand caressing his hair, the other holding Sirius's, with out moving.

A deep shaking breath rattled through his chest and Sirius tilted his head back so he could look at Remus.

"Sorry, got your quilt all wet and snotty." Sirius managed to turn his lips upwards in a warbling smile.

"Its okay, it'll wash. Do you want to be hugged?"

Sirius watched him a moment, watched his face and the subtle nuances of lines and twitching muscles. He wasn't sure what he was trying to read there, what he was searching for, but whatever it was he must have found it, because he nodded.

Remus sat up slowly, his body creaking in protest at having lain so still so long and so tensely. He slipped an arm under Sirius, helping him to find a sitting position, before he reached out and drew him into his arms, holding Sirius close against his chest, hugging him tightly. Sirius's stick like arms came around Remus and hugged him back. They sat like that a long moment, before parting slowly. They caught each other's eyes briefly, before finding something else to occupy their attention. The silence stretched ant then Sirius laughed hoarsely, tensely.

"Well then…" He felt Remus's hand rest over the top of his, not letting that tentative connection drift away again.

"How do you feel, do you need something to drink?"

Sirius turned his hand under Remus's, giving his fingers a gentle squeeze. "Sure, that would be good. Thank you." Sirius managed another weak smiled, looking into Remus's eyes again. He had meant for it to be a brief contact, just a moment, a brush of souls, to comfort him. But when amber met sapphire, they locked.

Remus leaned, then hesitated, stopping inches from Sirius's mouth. He paused there, eyes searching over Sirius's. He leaned in again, and closed those last inches.

It wasn't a chaste kiss, even if it was brief, a kiss no matter how innocent can ever be chaste between lovers, even if it bridged years. It was gentle though, and tender, and when Remus sat back again, Sirius felt his hand rise to his mouth and touch his lips lightly in an unbelieving fashion.

"I love you, Siri." Remus's hand touched the side of his face lightly, fingertips against his slightly stubbled cheek.

"I love you too, Remi." He didn't feel it, not entirely, not deeply and truly, the way he thought he used to, there were still huge hollow spaces in his soul that had been left when he forgot what it was like to love and be loved, but… he knew that he _could_ love again.

Remus smiled and pulled away further, trailing his fingers along Sirius's cheek until he had pulled away entirely and was standing beside the bed. "Be right back."

Remus retrieved some water for both of them, and some crackers to fill empty stomachs, even though neither of them were hungry. Sirius used the loo, and stretched out a little, his own narrow frame protesting at the lack of movement over the last hour or more, washing his face with cold water. They met again in the dim light from the storm outside, picnicking on the bed of their water and crackers. It was a silent meal, as they both tried to put themselves back together, feel their way along the twisting, dark tunnels of their emotions to some semblance of logic.

It was Remus's turn now. He sat at the head of the bed, leaning back against the headboard, his knees drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped around them. "Sirius, understand, I am not trying to belittle what you've been through…"

"Remus, would you stop bloody fretting so much. Just tell the story. It's your tale, that's what matters. I am listening because it's been twelve years, and… well… I have no clue what that's entailed for you. And I should."

"All right… I guess… I should start at the beginning…"

Arthur's Note: I have no idea why I haven't posted it sooner, its been done forever. I am hoping to write some more on this piece and work on some other ones in the Harry Potter genre, thanks for sticking with me!


	8. Remus Revisited

Starfall, Moonset

Chapter eight:

Remus Revisited

- -

Aurthor's Note: For those of you who don't remember, the last chapter left off with Remus about to start his account of what had happened to him since the Potter's death. This is the reaccounting of that time.

"_Remus."_

_"No! No! Don't you dare say it Dumbledore, we did everything, everything, right! No!" Remus didn't even need to guess at why Dumbledore had appeared in his kitchen. _

_"Remus."_

_"No! Please…sir…' His anguish was acute, his breath seized and stoppered in his lungs. _

_"Lily and James-"_

_"NO!"_

_"Have been killed. If you see Sirius-"_

_"No… Sirius? What happened to Sirius?" Remus seized Dumbledore by the front of his robes, hands fisted in the material, ready to lift him straight off the ground. "Where is Sirius!"_

_"Remus, I don't know. But, if he is still alive an act of treachery has been committed here. Your fellowship has been broken." Dumbledore's face was gentle, and furious. Remus could practically smell his thoughts. 'Bad apple, that boy was a bad apple, I should have seen it after what happened with Severus.' Because it was the undercurrent to his own thoughts, somewhere under a pain that threatened to unhinge his knees, was fury. Moony was out for blood._

_He had released the headmaster then, and screamed for him to get out, before he went to his room-- their room— and stripped naked before pulling on the paramilitary clothes that he had from his dealings with the Irish Wizarding Republican Army. He laced his boots up with still hands._

_By the time he got to the Potters', Sirius had come and had left his motorbike with Hagrid who had left with Harry. When he stepped into the rubble that had once been the Potter's handsome little cottage he was alone with two corpses. Sirius had been there, Remus could smell him on James's body; see the wet trails on Lily's cheeks. The bodies had been moved together and lay as if sleeping. James was missing an arm, but Lily was pristine in death. Moony growled from Remus's chest, his tawny head falling back as he howled, his anguish echoing over the moors. _

_He cleaned off the bodies of his friends, using water from a broken pipe that had turned the once-kitchen into a swamp. He changed Lily into her favorite clothes and hid the pallor of her lips with lip-gloss from a ruined vanity. James he changed into his Auror's robes, sliding his arm into where I should rest in his robes, and put his spare pair of glasses on his face, smoothing unruly black hair. _

_"You deserve a better funeral then I can provide my friends, but I won't let you be desecrated after death," he whispered, before lifting Lily into his arms, carrying her, as he knew James had carried her, across the threshold as he brought her over the doorsill into the next life. _

_He had carried their bodies by hand, no one, not even magic, would he let take this last duty from him. He would let Peter pay his respects later, but the man would faint dead away if he saw the bodies, even shrouded. He struggled through the underbrush with James's body, barely able to manage weight, James having been nearly twenty pounds heavier than him. He laid James next to his wife on the high flat rock that had served as a secret make out spot for both couples during their Hogwarts years. _

_"And now, for a good Irish wake," Remus laughed bitterly as he drew out a flask from his breast pocket and drunk deeply, before letting out another howl, almost loud enough to wake the dead, almost. _

_He sat Irish Shiva for the requisite twenty-four hours, screaming and singing, and drinking, reviling, celebrating their lives, their love, and waiting for the knutes to fall from their eyes when they woke, because they couldn't really be dead._

_But they were._

_He had found sheets among the ruins of their house, and had gathered them. He laid each out on them, tucking their wands; James's broken, in their hands. A dead snitch he slipped into James's left hand, one of Harry's stuffed animals into Lily's. Remus then rolled them in their shrouds, summoning three cords for each, one red, one black and one white, and bound up the heavy fragile weights that were the remnants of his fate-circle. His coven. His Fellowship. _

_He dug the graves half drunk, but the work sobered him. He almost wasn't able to climb back out when he was done, having buried them so deep, to keep them safe from wild creatures and darkness. Remus lay them to rest gently, his first sobs coming as he begin to shovel dirt over them, hiding their shrouded bodies, sending them back to the earth as their spirits soared to the heavens_

_Stones were piled over the mounds made by their bodies in the earth so no animal would desecrate them. On top of the stone caerns he strew wildflowers, watering them with tears barely felt. Remus made no markers for the graves; he needed none, and this secret he would keep. No one would betray them ever again. They would not trust him with Harry; they would not trust them with their Secret, but he could be the keeper of the dead, and this secret would be kept, if it meant his blood and life, and that of all his kin, this secret would be kept._

_He kept it to this day. No one knew where those rock mounds were. Harry had never been told of them. The only ones who knew there had even been bodies were those few who had seen the scene. Himself, Hagrid, Sirius, Dumbledore. Not even Dumbledore knew of the well-tended mounds, deep in the woods, the mounds that Moony sometimes visited on the full moon, and howled his sorrow. He had wanted to burry the pieces of peter they had found out there as well, but the man's death had been too public, one more hero dead in service to the light, and the public wanted his funeral. The Potters… the man and woman who had been the friends and family of the one who remained, were all but forgotten in the name of their son. Even if a werewolf couldn't be trusted to anything else, he could keep the dead. _

- -

_"Remus, I would keep you on here…" Dumbledore watched him across the no-mans-land of his desk, his endless blue eyes full of sorrow. Remus supposed the headmaster was grieving too, a man looking at his last living son. _

_"Keep me on like Hagrid? Out of pity?" Remus sighed. "No Sir. No…even if you could invent a position for me… I can't stay here. It hurts." Remus's voice was dead and hollow in his own ears._

_"Remus… lad…" But Dumbledore said no more. There was nothing left to say._

_"Thank you, headmaster. You… have done more then anyone… Thank you." Remus stood slowly, dreamily, and glided from Dumbledore's office, down the winding stairs and into the hallway. _

_"Remus."_

_Remus paused, and turned slowly. "Good afternoon Severus," his voice had never been so cordial. So absent. "I am not sure I've ever heard you call me by my given name before."_

_"Remus…" Severus, a man who had never been kind a day in his life (and in hindsight Remus wondered if this wasn't because he had never known a day of kindness in his life) was reaching out to him. "This… must be hard for you."_

_"I'm sorry Severus. I was very cruel to you when we were boys. When I should have been nice. I know we made your life hell. I am sorry. I've treated you badly."_

_"Are you leaving?" Snape's voice was quiet, with out the bitter edge that Remus had always heard in it. _

_"I can't stay here. You're a good man… I think… under all those spikes meant to keep people away… and under all that grease," Remus's lips quirked up faintly, and Snape's echoed._

_"Be careful… Loony Lupin," A shimmer of light slid down one pale cheek. "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named maybe gone… but there is still a world of danger out there." His hand came up, and rested on Remus's shoulder, and Remus realized that they have never touched before; never once in the decade they had known each other. Remus managed to lift his hand, a hand that felt like drift wood, and rested it on Severus's shoulder. _

_They stood like that, only for a moment, a moment that hadn't changed the millions of moments before it, and wouldn't ease the million moments after it, but for those three breaths, they were brothers, veterans, of the same war._

_"May the road rise to meet you, the wind be at your back, and the sun on your face." Remus stepped away then, and turned. He felt Severus's fathomless eyes on him, as the only sound was the soles of his boots on the stone floor._

- -

_Buddhist believed that the holiest thing a man could do was sell all his possessions but a begging bowl, shave his head, and live on the generosity of others. That might fly in Tibet, but Remus was starting to realize that in London that might not be the case. He had sold the Potter's house, the one before Godric's Hollow, the one he and Sirius had shared with them, and put the money in the Potter's bank vault for Harry. _

_He had then sold almost everything he and Sirius had once owned. Anything that could bring money. The rest, he had stored in the basement of the shrieking shack. He hadn't been able to part with the bedstead that had been a Lupin family heirloom, anything from their school days, his photos, some other keepsakes and mementos, everything else had brought him enough to pay off the last of the debt his parents left him. That done, with two sets of clothes to his name, he had packed a knapsack, picked up his staff, and started walking._

_McGonagall had sent him a very angry owl that had found him on the shore of Ireland (he had apparated the English channel), a very angry letter with ink blurred in small circular drops that smelled like the ocean. She called him nine kinds of crazy, leaving like he had, not word. They would have helped him, she said, they would have found him work, she would have loaned him what he needed. How could he leave? How was he going to get on in the world, without two knutes to rub together? What about his Lycanthropy, had he thought of that? What if he hurt himself worse than he could tend on his own? Then what? Had he even thought about anyone else? _

_Remus folded that letter and tucked it in the wooden box with his most precious treasures. That letter was followed by another, and then three successive howlers. Her voice got shriller with each red envelope that disintegrated in his hands. In fact, the days he spent on the western coast of Ireland brought him more mail then he got most years at Hogwarts. Molly Weasley, Arthur Weasley, Moody, Madame Pomfery, Peter's mother… He carefully folded each and added them to the pile, soon having more parchment then food. _

_He spent three years homeless. He saw a lot of the world; in fact, it hadn't been so bad, working odd jobs, never staying long enough for anyone to figure out what he was. He had to work hard to stay alive, hard enough that there was no room for pain, for grief. His hair had grown out, falling down past his shoulders by the time he returned to England. He spent a week in a park in London, but after being rolled twice, he went back to his native Northern Ireland, and rejoined the Irish Republican Wizarding Army. He spent another three years with them as a field mediwizard. They hadn't cared that he was a Werewolf, or that he was gay. _

_He had a few brief liaisons in those years, a few Irishmen who joyed his bed, but there hadn't really been any joy in it. Tenderness sometimes, need, desperation more often. And sometimes… sometimes he heard the Sea. Not the roll and crash of the west coast of Ireland, as he had in his first days alone. This was a different coast, a harsher one, where waves didn't break, they shattered. And sometimes, he heard sobbing, or screaming… and sometimes, when he lifted his nose to the wind… he smelled the fur of a large black dog._

- -

_"Where is the circuit breaker for the house Mrs. Dursley?" _

_"Under the stairs, this way," the prim long necked woman clipped over the hardwood floor of Number Four Privet Drive. Remus wondered what kind of a woman could wear heels all day, in her own house. She opened the door to the crawl space. "On the wall in here Mr-- " She paused, making it obvious she was having to read the name on his blue work shirt. "O'Seanaughsey." She made his alias sound like a dirty word. It had been his mother's maiden name._

_"Thank you, Mrs. Dursley," he stuck his head into the crawl space, grateful she had not recognized him, as he had been a groomsman at Lily and James's wedding, but, of course, twenty pounds lighter, with facial hair and a ponytail, he supposed he wasn't very recognizable. _

_"I'll stay out of your way."_

_'Rene O'Seanaughsey' jumped, almost hitting his head on the slanted ceiling as his heart missed a beat, then started again, hard enough he thought it would break against his ribs. James! No, Harry, Harry Potter._

_"I'm sorry, I hope I am not disturbing you," Remus a.k.a. Rene said and managed a smile, which he hoped was friendly but detached, as he opened the door to the circuit breaker over the little boy's cot. Remus wasn't positive, but he thought the boy was eight._

_"You're not. I'm trying to hide from my cousin Dudley," the boy pushed his glasses up in his nose, in a motion so agonizingly familiar 'Rene' had to turn back to the switches on the wall quickly, lest his tears become noticeable._

_"Is that so? Why is that?"_

_"Because he will punch me in the arm," the little boy said matter of factly. 'Rene' kept his eyes on the box as he drew out a screwdriver with a rubber handle and started to work. _

_"That doesn't sound very nice."_

_"Its not. What's your name?" _

_"Re-" he paused and cleared his throat. "Rene O'Seanaughsey."_

_"My aunt doesn't like the Irish." _

_'Rene' paused and bent down close to the boy, whispering, as he met Lily's eyes through round glasses. "Well you know what?"_

_"What?"_

_"I don't like your aunt." Remus winked and smiled slightly. _

_Harry laughed quietly, covering his mouth, as though laughter wasn't allowed. 'Rene' returned to his work. The small boy sat cross-legged on his cot, watching 'Rene' unabashedly._

_"I've never seen a man with long hair before… only girls." _

_"Ever seen a girl with a beard?" 'Rene' felt his lips twitch upward slowly. Gods, but he wanted to scoop up that little boy, hold him against his chest, and run as far and as fast as he could, to take him away from the emotional nightmare he must be living here… And to rescue himself from his own. Harry laughed again, quiet, muffled, taboo._

_"No. But isn't Rene a girl name?"_

_"Not if you're French." Remus blinked as the red and black electrical switches before him blurred and ran like water on a window._

_"But you're Irish."_

_"And French. Rene was my father's name, O'Seanaughsey my mothers maiden name." 'Rene' answered with perfect honesty, doubting an eight year old would think to ask why his surname was the same as his mother's. _

_"You have parents?" Again, small fingers pushing glasses back into place, an echo of his father._

_"Well, not any more, they died, many years ago." Remus replied around a lump in his throat. He had gone to great lengths to get into the Dursley's house, and he knew he had only a very few minutes with Harry, but every second was worth it._

_"Mine too. Did you know yours?" Harry asked curiously._

_It was going to kill him, standing here, talking to James's son, Lily's son, like a complete stranger, as if he hadn't changed a hundred of his diapers, or rocked him to sleep, or fed him. He swallowed hard, and fought back the urge to say 'Yes, and yours too'. Instead..._

_"Yes, I did, my dad died when I was sixteen, my mom when I was twenty. I knew them very well, and loved them very much. Did you know yours?"_

_"No, they died when I was a baby, but I miss them too." _

_Damn it why did the repair have to be so damned easy, he was almost done, and he wanted this conversation to last forever. He wasn't sure he could walk away from this boy. He closed his took box, and hunkered down in front of Harry, at eye level, he managed a smile._

_"Harry… I'm going to tell you a secret."_

_"My aunt says that if an adult asks you to keep a secret, you need to tell someone right away, because you shouldn't ever half to keep secrets for adults, especially if they hurt you." Harry didn't seem afraid though._

_"Well, you don't have to keep this secret, it is my secret, and I am giving it to you to do what you want, and I'm not going to hurt you, okay?" 'Rene' said, holding perfectly still, his eyes never leaving Harry._

_"Okay."_

_"Good. Harry, there is magic, no matter what anyone tells you. Your parents did love you, more then anything in the world. And when you feel completely alone in the world… remember that there are people all around you who love you. Hiding in the shadows, watching from afar. You are loved and treasured, more than you can ever realize. Your heart kindles my heart," He cupped his hands in front of his mouth and blew gently, working the first magic he had worked in years. A small heatless ball of flame slowly grew into existence, resting and dancing in his cupped palms. He guided it forward gently with a breath, letting go. The small glowing ball floated across the space between them, and Harry's small hand came up, and touched it. The flame spread gently around his hand, and traveled down his arm to his chest, where it glowed brightly over his heart a moment._

_"You know magic!" Harry's voice was of breathless, wondrous excitement._

_"Yes. Remember, you are never alone," Remus whispered_

_The small dark head nodded, jaw slightly lax in astonishment. "And my heart kindles your heart…?"_

_"Yes, Harry, yes it does. I will see you again," he stood slowly, and slipped from the crawl space under the stairs of number four privet drive. When he walked out to the electricians van a few minutes later, his hands shook. He drove less then three blocks before he pulled over, and put his face in his hands and sobbed._

- -

_Dear Remus,_

_I know you don't like charity, and I would not insult you by offering it. I, however, am in dire need of a Defense Against Dark Arts Professor. I know that you are overqualified for the position, but, as a favor to an old friend, I beg you to accept. The children at Hogwarts are in desperate need of a Professor with experience and passion for the job. You would, of course, be extended free room and board in addition to monetary compensation. I have also been informed by one Professor Snape, that he has perfected the Wolfsbane potion and has, grudgingly, agreed to medicate you thusly. The pay is not near what I would like to pay someone of your qualification, but I hope you consider my offer anyway._

_Sincerely, _

_Albus Dumbledore _

_Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry_

- -

_It was a small café in Belfast. The kind of place that college students gather in every country, the kind of place where the lighting was bad, the coffee was good, and smoking or not, you inhaled enough tobacco to give you a real buzz. Remus sat with his back to the entrance, a window in front of him. He saw Severus enter, a familiar sneer reflected at Remus as he sat and held the hot mug with cold, chapped hands. Snape didn't recognize him. Remus wasn't surprised, it wasn't as though they had been close; and he wasn't sure his own mother would recognize him these days. His hair was still worn long, as it had been for many years now, but no one from Hogwarts had seen him since they day he had walked out twelve years ago. It was also significantly grayer. He knew his frame was more gaunt, and hunched. Finally he took pity on Snape, whose sneer was beginning to falter as he stood in the door longer and longer, starting to draw attention to himself. Remus turned in his booth._

_"Severus," he raised one hand briefly. Snape's eyes widened a moment, just a brief moment; it was so rare to get any expression other then contempt from his face. _

_"Lupin," the tall man glided across the uneven linoleum floor, his forehead glaring slightly in the bad lighting. Remus supposed some things never changed, like Snape's greasiness. He had never seen his once-nemesis in muggle clothing, never once. In fact, Snape was barely recognizable himself. He wore a pair of black muggle jeans; a black dress shirt buttoned to the top button and tucked in. His black hair was pulled back with a leather thong at the nape of his neck. He looked like a priest. Remus stood and offered his hand, which Snape shook briefly, before they both sat. "This place is revolting."_

_"It's warm," Remus shrugged, returning his mug to his hands, warming them. He hunched over the cup slightly, as if it were a mini heater. _

_"It's infected," Snape brushed his hands together as if trying to rid them of something disgusting, probably Remus's touch. _

_His eyes roved over Lupin's form wondering what the hell had happened to him. Severus had known a very neat, put together Remus Lupin, a khaki and sweaters type of man. The type of person who was fastidiously clean. They called him Professor Lupin before he had even graduated from Hogwarts. This man… was not that man. This man had long hair, and a beard and mustache, though closely trimmed, this man wore a threadbare blue chambray shirt and a pair of multi pocketed pants that had probably had more darning then actual pant to them. _

_"The coffee is cheap."_

_"Have you ordered?"_

_"Just the coffee," Remus poured some more from the pot between them, and added sugar, stirring it like tea at the queen's palace, some habits never died. _

_"Not even you'd eat here, that says something," Severus quirked a brow, glad that Remus still had some standards._

_"Yeah, that I shop at the food shelf," the werewolf shrugged as if to say 'better then rats'. He took a sip of his coffee. Severus stared at him like he had sprouted a second set of ears, pointed and furry ones. Remus looked back down into his cup. Severus's voice was quieter when he spoke again; it was the closest he could get to gentler. _

_"Then why are you so adamantly refusing the headmasters offer of work? Did your brain finally start to leak out your ears?" _

_"I won't take charity," Remus's eyes didn't leave his cup. _

_"Do you think Albus was lying when he said he was in dire need of a professor? We've been going through Defense teachers like Hagrid goes through dragon hide gloves, one a year."_

_"Why are you here Severus?" Remus added some cream to his coffee, he wasn't particularly fond of cream, but it was a form of nutrition anyway. _

_"Because some one needs to pound some sense into you. This has gone on entirely too long. You have been throwing a tantrum for thirteen years and it is time it stopped." Severus looked up when a muggle with more hair then brains stopped at their table._

_"What can I get you handsome?"_

_Remus sputtered into his mug as the hot liquid threatened to come out his nose. James and Sirius would have laughed until they cried, Snape, handsome?_

_"Coffee," he paused, looking over Remus then glancing down at the menu that he didn't dare touch. "And a muffin." Severus wasn't hungry himself, but he doubted Remus would eat if he didn't. _

_"What kind, sugar?" _

_Remus kept his face in his coffee. Snape stiffened; he wasn't so socially inept that he appreciated this woman's attention. "I don't care." _

_"We have blueberry, cranberry, chocolate-"_

_"Surprise me," Snape said, his voice dripping with disdain. The woman finally took the hint, and disappeared._

_"She'll spit in your coffee," Remus muttered, having only just managed not to do the same into his own._

_"She wouldn't dare," Severus dismissed, nudging the menu closer to the edge of the table with a finger, not wanting to actually touch it. _

_"You don't know muggles very well do you?" Remus shook his head. "To rephrase my question, why are you in particular, here? I think if Dumbledore thought he could lecture me into submission he would have sent McGonagall." _

_Severus didn't speak for a full minute, letting the chatter of the muggles around them fill the silence, it was he who looked down this time. This was one of the reasons he disliked Lupin, the man saw right through him, into the parts of himself that he held secret and sacred as easily as he saw through a window. "I volunteered." He felt Remus's eyes on him and it was worse then a truth serum. "I asked. Dumbledore was going to leave off; but I asked if he would let me come and speak with you in person."_

_"And what made you think that would convince me? Further more, why do you care?" At one time, Remus had been a listener. He would have sat and waited for Severus to speak, the silence working to make the man spill all the things he was trying to keep silent. Remus didn't used to be a pusher. _

_"I thought…" Severus sighed, relieved as a mug of coffee appeared in his hand like magic, the muggle waitress now breezing away. Snape had a feeling that if they needed the pot refilled it would be a long time in coming; and she probably had spit in his coffee. He fumbled briefly with the little plastic cup of cream, taking a moment to understand how the packaging worked. When he finally managed to open it, he dumped the whole thing in his coffee. The clinking of his spoon against the cup as he stirred the mixture was like mocking laughter. "You aren't going to quit until you've broken me down will you. That is why I hated you, damn it." Snape hissed. "You had so much power over me you never had to even prove it. I always consoled myself that the reason Potter and Black tormented me so was to prove what men they were. You never even needed to do that. Damn you Lupin!"_

_"Too late," Remus replied drolly. Damned he already was. "But you're wrong, or at least dishonest, of course it's forgivable because you're lying to yourself too. The reason you hate me is because I see the very insecure person inside the mocking disdain."_

_"Fuck you!" Severus hissed, harsh and shrill, his eyes flying up for a moment to boor into Remus's before dropping again. "Fuck you," he repeated, with out feeling. Remus, who had never once heard Snape curse, was a bit taken aback. Snape considered himself above such vulgarities. _

_"Only for money, and you might want to let me take a shower first," Remus sighed, and sipped his coffee, regaining himself. It was easy to be drawn back into these boyish squabbles, these familiar things. It was true, he knew that with only words he could break Snape down to nothing, but as man who had once been a boy who tried to rescue worms in the road after a storm, he also knew he would never do it. _

_The waitress returned, practically dropping the pastry in front of Snape, along with his check. Snape glared at the muffin distrustfully and poked it gingerly with the tines of his fork. After taking a moment to polish his water spotted knife on his paper napkin, he cut the muffin in half, straight down the middle. He lifted one half delicately with his knife and fork, and set it before Remus. The stains on the knife suggested blueberries. "If I'm going to get sick from eating here, my misery will have company."_

_Remus smiled ever so slightly, "Why Severus? Why are you being nice to me?"_

_"Don't let it go to your head Lupin, I'm just afraid you'll die right here across from me and then I will have to spend my evening explaining it to the muggle authorities. Its not charity, its self interest," Snape was carefully folding down the half of paper still left around his muffin with his fork, as though if he touched it, it might bite him before he could bite it._

_"Fair enough." From anyone else Remus would have thought that was a load of tripe, but Severus would cut off his nose to spite his face… or more importantly, spite Remus. He broke off a chunk of the muffin and popped it in his mouth, managing not to crumb on himself. "So, why did you ask to come, when Dumbledore had written me off?"_

_"He hadn't written you off. His words were: 'that boy hurts enough for any ten of us, let him be.' Personally, Lupin, I think you're wallowing. There are people who still need you, believe it or not. Your obligation to society didn't end with the Potters. If you're waiting to die, its going to be a very long wait, your life span… shall we say… is a bit enhanced." Severus was turning his muffin into a production, like if the wind came out of the west it would explode._

_"This isn't motivating me."_

_"I am not your personal life coach."_

_"I'm shocked." Remus's half of the muffin was gone. Snape half suspected the man had just unhinged his jaw like a snake when he wasn't looking and swallowed it whole. Severus had known a lot of pain in his life… but the pain of starvation was as foreign to him as love, but he suspected that Remus hovered at the edge of it. _

_"There are a lot of people who are very worried about you. And what about Harry?"_

_"What about Harry?" Remus sipped his coffee nonchalantly. "I haven't been good enough for him for the last decade, what's changed?" He had been watching the boy from a distance on and off through out the lad's life, but only once had he mustered the courage and resolve to actually get close to him. Or rather the resolve not to kidnap him and head for the mountains of Tibet, or the Arabian dessert, of the jungles South America, anywhere to get away. _

_"That is none of my affair, that is between you and the headmaster," Snape sniffed, his nose starting to rise skyward at the mention of the Potter boy._

_"You have yet to convince me of anything accept that you're not going to let that muffin get within a foot of your mouth." Remus said with a shake of his head._

_"Listen, Lupin, I really don't want to get all touchy-feely with you. Just do is all a favor and come back and teach for the year. I know you want to, you're just playing hard to get," Severus growled. "Not that you ever played hard to get for Black."_

_The back and forth continued, as Remus carefully ate his half of the muffin, pocketing Severus's when he refused to eat it. Remus wasn't sure how, but in his own abrupt, rude way, Severus had managed to talk him into teaching a year at Hogwarts. At the same time, Remus was convinced that no one else would have been able to convince him to do it. There was a connection between himself and Severus, always had been, a certain understanding of two men who shared similar past experience. They were comrades, veterans of the same war. They may not be friends, but they were at last allies._


End file.
